2 Best Sights in The Latin Quarter, Montreal

Artist and architect Napoléon Bourassa called his work here l'oeuvre de mes amours, or a labor of love—and it shows. He designed the little Byzantine-style building himself and set about decorating it with the exuberance of an eight-year-old making a Mother's Day card. He covered the walls with murals and encrusted the altar and pillars with gilt and ornamental carving. It's not Montréal's biggest monument to the Virgin Mary, but it's the most unabashedly sentimental.

This large, leafy square is an oasis in the middle of Montréal's urban jungle of noise, traffic jams, and construction. Entering the square, which is surrounded by colorful and ornate Second Empire-style graystone homes, feels a little like entering a children's picture book, especially in winter, when the ground and the houses are blanketed with snow and the white stuff muffles all sound. In summer, locals spread out on the grass by the fountain or take a bistro table at the little gray kiosk (formerly a public toilet) café that serves sandwiches, salads, ice cream, and other cold refreshments—it even offers a book exchange. And for an unexpected bonus, some of the lanes to the side and rear of the square's beautiful houses have been lovingly "greened up" with street art and vegetation, thanks to a lot of hard work and effort on the part of the neighbors.