McGill University

McGill University is Canada's most prestigious university — founded in 1821 with a bequest from fur trader James McGill, and occupying a campus at the foot of Mount Royal that is one of the most beautiful urban university settings in North America. The Roddick Gates on Sherbrooke Street open onto a tree-lined avenue that climbs toward the Arts Building (1843), and the view back down the avenue — framed by limestone buildings with the city skyline beyond — is one of Montreal's classic perspectives.

The campus is a mix of 19th-century greystone buildings and modern additions that together represent nearly 200 years of Canadian academic architecture. The Redpath Museum (1882), a natural history museum with dinosaur skeletons, minerals, and ethnographic collections, is free to enter and is one of the oldest purpose-built museum buildings in North America. The Redpath Library, the McLennan Library, and the Schulich School of Music are all architecturally notable, and the campus green spaces — including the lower field that slopes down toward Sherbrooke — provide some of the only open lawn in downtown Montreal.

McGill's location in the downtown core means the campus functions as a public park as much as a university — Montrealers walk through the grounds as a shortcut between Sherbrooke and the mountain, and the autumn foliage on the main avenue (the trees are predominantly maples, making the fall colours spectacularly Canadian) draws photographers every October. The university is open to the public, and walking the campus from the Roddick Gates to the top of the hill takes about 20 minutes and provides a compressed history of Canadian institutional architecture.