Explore Vancouver

Science World is a science centre at the eastern end of False Creek, housed in the geodesic dome built as Expo Centre for the Expo 86 world's fair. It opened as a science centre in 1989 and is run by a not-for-profit society. Its galleries hold hands-on exhibits on physics, the body, nature and technology, along with changing exhibitions.

Granville Island is a former industrial peninsula on False Creek, beneath the south end of the Granville Street Bridge, built up on reclaimed land from 1915. Since 1979 it has been home to the Granville Island Public Market in an old factory hall, and today it also has artists' studios, theatres, a marina and restaurants.

Queen Elizabeth Park covers 52 hectares on Little Mountain, about 125 metres above sea level, on the site of early 20th-century basalt quarries. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth dedicated it in 1939; the old quarry became a sunken garden, and the Bloedel Conservatory dome of 1969 holds tropical plants and birds.

The Bloedel Conservatory is a domed conservatory and aviary at the top of Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in the City of Vancouver. Opened in 1969 as a centennial project funded by the Bloedel Foundation, its triodetic dome holds around 500 species of tropical and subtropical plants, koi and more than 200 free-flying birds, among them parrots and macaws.

The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden is a walled garden in Vancouver's Chinatown, built in 1985–86 in the style of the Ming dynasty scholars' gardens of Suzhou, with craftsmen and materials from China. Pavilions, covered walkways, limestone rocks and a jade-green pond are arranged as a series of views. A public park beside it shares the pond.

The Vancouver Art Gallery is an art museum on Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, founded in 1931. Since 1983 it has occupied the former provincial courthouse designed by Francis Rattenbury, a National Historic Site. Its collection of about 12,000 works covers art from British Columbia, including a large group of paintings by Emily Carr, and from around the world.

The Vancouver Lookout is the observation deck on top of the Harbour Centre skyscraper on West Hastings Street, opened with the building in 1977. Glass elevators run up the outside of the tower to a circular deck with a 360-degree view over downtown, Stanley Park, the harbour and the North Shore Mountains. Panels on the deck name the landmarks in view.

Gastown is the original settlement from which Vancouver grew, named after 'Gassy' Jack Deighton, a steamboat captain who opened its first saloon in 1867. Now a national historic site, it has Victorian brick buildings along cobbled Water Street, shops and restaurants, and a steam-powered clock built in 1977 at the corner of Cambie Street.

The Bill Reid Gallery on Hornby Street in downtown Vancouver is devoted to the Haida artist Bill Reid (1920–1998) and to contemporary Indigenous art of the Northwest Coast. Its permanent collection includes his 8.5-metre bronze frieze Mythic Messengers, carvings, masks and gold and silver jewellery, beside changing exhibitions.

VanDusen Botanical Garden is a botanical garden in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighbourhood, laid out on part of the former Shaughnessy Golf Course and opened in 1975. It is named after the lumberman W. J. VanDusen and run by the Park Board with the Vancouver Botanical Gardens Association. Its grounds hold lakes, plant collections from around the world and a hedge maze.

The Museum of Vancouver is the city's civic history museum, founded in 1894 and housed in Vanier Park in a round building with a conical roof that it shares with the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. Its galleries follow Vancouver through the 20th century, decade by decade, beside Indigenous belongings and changing exhibitions.

The H.R. MacMillan Space Centre is an astronomy museum in Vanier Park that opened on 28 October 1968 under the conical roof it shares with the Museum of Vancouver. Its Planetarium Star Theatre shows 360-degree dome films about the solar system and the universe, and the centre adds live science demonstrations and an interactive gallery.

The Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vanier Park opened in 1959 and tells the maritime history of Vancouver and the Canadian Arctic. Its A-frame building was raised around the St. Roch, an RCMP schooner built in 1928 that sailed the Northwest Passage in both directions. Galleries show ship models, maritime art and a children's discovery centre.

Canada Place is a waterfront building on Burrard Inlet in Vancouver whose roof of white fabric peaks resembles sails. Built as the Canada Pavilion of Expo 86, it now holds the city's main cruise ship terminal, where Alaska cruises begin, the Vancouver Convention Centre East building, the Pan Pacific hotel and the FlyOver ride.

The Vancouver Aquarium is a public aquarium in Stanley Park, opened in 1956. Its galleries show sea life of the Pacific coast of British Columbia beside tropical and Amazon habitats, with fish, jellyfish, sea otters and sea lions. It also runs marine research, education and the rescue of injured marine mammals. Bill Reid's bronze killer whale stands at the entrance.

Stanley Park is a 405-hectare forest park on the northwestern half of Vancouver's downtown peninsula, opened in 1888 and named after Lord Stanley, then Governor General. An 8.8-kilometre seawall runs around its shore, and inside are forest trails, beaches, the Brockton Point totem poles and lighthouse, and the Vancouver Aquarium.

Capilano Suspension Bridge Park is a private park in the District of North Vancouver, built around a footbridge 140 metres long that hangs 70 metres above the Capilano River. The first bridge of hemp rope and cedar planks was put up in 1889. Paths lead to the Treetops Adventure walkways in the Douglas firs and to a collection of totem poles.

The Museum of Anthropology stands on the University of British Columbia campus in western Vancouver, in a concrete and glass building by Arthur Erickson that opened in 1976. Its Great Hall holds totem poles from Haida and other First Nations villages, and it shows Bill Reid's cedar sculpture The Raven and the First Men among some 50,000 objects.

Grouse Mountain is a peak of the North Shore Mountains in the District of North Vancouver, rising to over 1,200 metres above Metro Vancouver. The Skyride aerial tramway carries visitors to the Peak Chalet and a mountaintop area with a grizzly bear habitat, walking trails and lookouts; in winter it is a ski area with four chairlifts.