Montreal's Underground City: A Walk Through the RÉSO

Every winter, a guest comes down to breakfast, looks out at the snow, and asks whether downtown is even worth it today. That is when we tell them about the other downtown, the one underneath the first: the Montreal underground city, a network of tunnels, shopping malls, atriums and metro stations running some 32 kilometres beneath the streets. Montrealers call it the RÉSO, a play on the French word for network, and it links roughly 2,000 shops, 200 restaurants and 10 metro stations. Something like half a million people pass through it every day, most of them barely noticing they are in it.

Set your expectations the Montreal way. It is not a gleaming city of the future; it is the working downtown with the weather removed, malls and office towers stitched together at basement level since 1962. And on a fine day, forget it entirely and walk above ground. Sainte-Catherine Street is one of the great shopping streets in the country, crowded and colourful well into the evening, and in good weather the street itself is the main event. The underground city is for the other days: January blizzards, April downpours, and July heat waves, when the tunnels are the coolest route across town.

Getting there from the Manor

From Gingerbread Manor at 3445 avenue Laval, downtown shopping on Sainte-Catherine is about a 25-minute walk, and there are entrances to the network all along the street. In real winter, take the metro instead: Sherbrooke station is three minutes from our door. Ride the Orange line one stop to Berri-UQAM, change to the Green line for McGill station, and you come up inside the Centre Eaton, already inside the network, about 15 minutes door to door and never properly outdoors. Our walker’s guide to the neighbourhood covers the above-ground version of the same trip.

The walk we send guests on

• Start at Simons, in the old Simpson’s building, now called Carrefour Industrielle Alliance. A Montreal institution on Sainte-Catherine, and the natural front door to this stretch of the network.
• West to Les Cours Mont-Royal. It was built as the Mount Royal Hotel, in its day the largest hotel in the British Empire. Now it is an elegant shopping mall; look up when you cross the old lobby court.
• East to Place Montréal Trust, five levels of shops around a tall glass atrium, and one of the crossroads of the whole system.
• On to the Centre Eaton, tied directly into McGill metro station. If the underground city has a centre, this is it.
• East again to the Promenades Cathédrale, the mall built directly underneath Christ Church Cathedral. In 1987 the cathedral was raised onto piles so the shops could be built below; the pillars holding it up stand right in the middle of the mall.
• Keep going east past Place-des-Arts station to Complexe Desjardins, the big atrium complex at the edge of the Quartier des spectacles. From there the network bends south toward Place-d’Armes, the convention centre and the edge of Old Montreal.
• Or branch south from the Centre Eaton to Place Ville Marie, where the underground city began in 1962, and on to Gare Centrale for the trains, with Place Bonaventure just across the way.

Front-desk tips before you dive in

Navigate by metro station names; they are the landmarks of the Montreal underground city, and the blue RÉSO signs mark the connecting corridors. If you get turned around, and everyone does once, simply go up: you will surface on or near Sainte-Catherine and can re-enter at the next door. The corridors keep roughly metro hours, about 5:30 in the morning to 1:00 at night, but the shops keep shopping hours, so an evening walk down there is mostly a window-shopping walk. And you do not need a plan. Half the pleasure is wandering from mall to atrium and seeing where the tunnels take you…

The Montreal underground city, four seasons a year

Winter is its famous season, when a shopping day needs no parka. Summer, the tunnels are air-conditioned while the street shimmers. Each winter, the Art Souterrain festival fills the corridors with contemporary art during Nuit Blanche, and the whole network turns into one long gallery. Rain in October? Downtown is still on. The Montreal underground city is not an attraction you visit once; it is how the city centre works, all year, in every weather.

So tell us at breakfast where you are headed, and we will point you to the right entrance and the stop to get off at. Then come back to the Manor, warm up, and tell us what you found under the city. The Montreal underground city rewards the curious, and it starts practically at our door.