Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Toronto
Kensington Market and the museums in six hours
The immigrant market, Chinatown, the crystal on the museum and the art gallery Gehry rebuilt.
The three-hour route runs along the waterfront. This one goes inland to the two big collections and the market between them. Kensington is a few blocks of Victorian houses turned into shops by successive waves of arrivals — Jewish, Portuguese, Caribbean, Vietnamese — and it is car-free on the last Sunday of the month, which is the day to come.
The route, stop by stop
-
Art Gallery of Ontario
Gehry rebuilt his childhood gallery in 2008 and the sculpture promenade along Dundas is the best part. The Thomson collection of Canadian art is the reason to stay.
80 min here Walk here → -
Kensington Market
Not a hall but a neighbourhood — produce, secondhand clothes, cheese, empanadas, in houses with the front rooms knocked out. Pedestrian-only on Pedestrian Sundays.
60 min here Walk here → -
Chinatown
Spadina and Dundas, one of the largest in North America and the second location after the original was demolished for the city hall.
35 min here Walk here → -
Royal Ontario Museum
Natural history and world cultures under Libeskind's crystal, which the city has never agreed about. The Chinese temple sculpture and the bat cave are the two rooms people remember.
-
Philosopher's Walk
A wooded footpath along a buried creek between the museum and the university, and the quietest thing in downtown Toronto.
20 min here Walk here → -
Queen's Park
The provincial parliament in pink sandstone, ringed by the oldest trees in the city.
30 min here Walk here →
More in Toronto
Every walking route in Toronto, or the full Toronto guide for where to stay and what a day costs.