Montréal, Canada

Montréal is the cultural capital of French Canada and the most European city in North America — a place where the street signs, the café culture and the long lunches feel closer to Lyon than to Toronto, set on an island in the St. Lawrence River. The historic core, Old Montréal (Vieux-Montréal), is a compact grid of cobblestone streets, 17th- and 18th-century stone buildings and the soaring Gothic Revival Notre-Dame Basilica, sloping down to a revived Old Port on the river. Rising behind downtown is Mount Royal, the green hill that gives the city its name, landscaped by the designer of New York's Central Park and crowned by a lookout over the skyline. The city's character, though, lives in its neighbourhoods: the Plateau-Mont-Royal with its exterior spiral staircases, murals and terraces; Mile End, the bohemian heart that gave the world Montréal bagels (boiled in honey water, baked in wood ovens) and a music scene; the Quartier des Spectacles, where the summer festivals — the huge International Jazz Festival, Just for Laughs, and more — take over the streets. Eating is a defining pleasure, from Schwartz's smoked-meat sandwiches and poutine to a deep bench of modern restaurants and the vast Jean-Talon and Atwater markets. Winters are long and cold, softened by the Underground City's twenty miles of climate-controlled passages and a culture that embraces the season; summers are warm, green and packed with outdoor life.