You can't miss Little Italy: The two arched gateways on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, the Italian flags snapping above the storefronts, the smells of bakeries and coffee and restaurants firing up their kitchen. Folks around these parts will either have all the bombast you want, loudly and happily proclaiming that whatever they're delivering is the best in the city, or they'll been quietly confident. Both, it turns out, are very Italian things to do.
What's easy to underestimate is how much is actually here. The obvious draws are well-earned: the cafés are among the finest in the city, the restaurants range from century-old pizza institutions to Michelin-recognized wine bars, and when the weather's good, it's great on its terrasses. But that's just scratching the surface: Little Italy rewards the curious who go a little deeper, who dip into the shops and spend hours at Jean-Talon Market, or find their way to a bocce game in Dante Park and end up staying longer than planned.
Geographically, it occupies a stretch of the Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough, running along Saint-Laurent with Saint-Zotique to the south and Jean-Talon to the north marking its rough edges. The Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense Church anchors the east end of Dante Street, the market anchors the north, and the streets between them hold most of what makes the neighbourhood worth your time.
It's compact enough to walk in an afternoon, and layered enough to keep bringing you back.
A brief history of Little Italy
The first Italians who came to Montreal in any significant numbers arrived in the 1880s, mostly young men from southern Italy, mostly poor, drawn by the prospect of hard labour on the Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk railways. The work was supposed to be temporary, but it wasn't for most of them.
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