Grey limestone bank halls and warehouses line narrow cobbled streets, with a twin towered basilica over Place d'Armes and a stone quay along the river.
What Vieux-Montréal looks like
Grey limestone bank halls and warehouses line and the streets around it, much of it still paved in cobblestone rather than replaced with asphalt. Rue Saint-Paul keeps a single traffic lane and narrow sidewalks with no bike lane. Its ground floors hold boutiques, art galleries, cafes and restaurants rather than chain stores.
's twin Gothic towers rise over Place d'Armes, their facade completed in 1865, with the beside it. The faces the same square, completed in 1888 and considered Canada's oldest skyscraper, breaking the grey stone pattern with red sandstone under an eight storey clock tower.
Rue Saint-Jacques holds the district's bank halls in the same grey stone. The Bank of Montreal's head office at 119 Saint-Jacques, built in 1847, fronts a colonnaded portico modelled on the Pantheon. The occupies a five storey 1909 bank hall built for the Canadian Bank of Commerce, its portico cut from grey Stanstead granite. The Royal Bank Building rises twenty two storeys over the same street in grey limestone.
's domed roof sits on Rue Saint-Paul near the river, its two storeys built in grey stone to a neoclassical design modelled on Dublin's Custom House. South of Saint-Paul, the Old Port waterfront runs along a stone quay, with a round white clock tower marking its edge. Horse drawn calèches wait along the cobblestones near Place Jacques-Cartier.
Shot in Vieux-Montréal
The corner of Rue Saint-Paul and Rue Bonsecours has stood in for Paris twice, in The Words and in Smurfs 2. The same corner played Murmansk, Russia in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Catch Me If You Can used Old Montreal's streets for a 1969 sequence set in Montpellier, France. Blades of Glory filmed in Old Montreal as itself, near the Olympic Stadium and Habitat 67 elsewhere in the city.
Smurfs 2
Played Paris, France, contemporary
Smurfs 2 filmed here in 2013 with Bonsecours Market visible behind the actors, using the corner to stand in for a Paris street. The Words used the same corner for Paris the year before. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button used it for Murmansk, Russia in 2008.
Vieux-Montréal has already doubled for Paris in The Words and Smurfs 2, its grey stone facades and narrow streets reading as the city with no digital dressing. Le Marais holds the same scale of three to five storey stone buildings along narrow streets, closer to Vieux-Montréal's own block sizes than any other Parisian district. Paris uses a warmer cream limestone rather than Old Montreal's grey. Mansard roofs with dormers are also more common there, so a wide shot lingering on rooflines needs correction. Try searching narrow Paris street now.
Custom House Quay in Dublin, Ireland
Bonsecours Market's own neoclassical design was modelled on Dublin's Custom House, so Vieux-Montréal already shares a direct architectural link to the Custom House Quay. Both waterfronts pair grey stone quay buildings with a domed civic hall facing the water, giving a wide establishing shot the same silhouette. Dublin's quay has Georgian brick terraces behind the stone buildings that Old Montreal does not, so a shot panning too far back would need those blocks dressed out or cropped. Try searching grey stone quay now.
Catch Me If You Can used Old Montreal for a 1969 Montpellier sequence. L'Écusson, Montpellier's medieval core, has the same narrow stone streets radiating from a historic center that the crew was standing in for. Montpellier's stone runs warmer and lighter than Vieux-Montréal's grey limestone, so the match holds better in shadow or overcast light than under full sun. Montpellier's streets run narrower still and are often pedestrian only, so a wide shot with parked cars or a wide sidewalk gives Old Montreal away. Try searching narrow stone streets now.
