World Travel Guide

City Guide  - Toronto  - Key Attractions
Key Attractions

CN Tower: The CN Tower is the world's tallest free-standing structure and the defining symbol of this lakefront city. At a height of 550m (1804ft), it offers stunning views of the surrounding cityscape and Lake Ontario. On a clear day, visitors can enjoy the glass-fronted elevator ride to the 113th-storey Sky Pod, offering stunning views of up to 120km (75 miles). A more leisurely view can be had from the revolving 360 Restaurant. There is also a group of entertainment venues at the base of the tower, including two motion-simulator rides.

301 Front Street West
Tel: (416) 360 8500. Fax: (416) 601 4713.
Web site: www.cntower.ca
Transport: Subway Union Station.
Opening hours: Sun-Thurs 0900-2200, Fri and Sat 0900-2300.
Admission: C$15.99; plus C$4.75(Sky Pod); concessions available.

Casa Loma
: Toronto seems an unlikely location for a castle but, since 1911, the soaring battlements of Casa Loma have lent an element of magic to the city centre. The castle was completed in 1914 by Sir Henry Pellatt, a charismatic financier, industrialist and philanthropist, to be his home. Financial ruin forced its sale years later, and the castle eventually became the renowned tourist attraction it is today. The castle is a bizarre hybrid of medieval-style stonework on the outside and early twentieth-century design inside. Outside, turrets and battlements lure the visitor inside to a splendidly carved Oak Room, secret passageways and a pseudo-Gothic Great Hall that has 18m (60ft) ceilings. The two-hectare (five-acre) gardens are open between May and October.

1 Austin Terrace
Tel: (416) 923 1171. Fax: (416) 923 5734.
E-mail: info@casaloma.org
Web site: www.casaloma.org
Transport: Subway Dupont.
Opening hours: Daily 0930-1600.
Admission: C$9.00 (concessions available).

Art Gallery of Ontario
: Canada's premier art gallery, the AGO as it is known, contains 50 galleries displaying temporary exhibitions and a large permanent collection of international art. The ground floor houses a European collection covering the Italian Renaissance, Flemish Masters, seventeenth-century French painting and the Impressionists, right through to twentieth-century works by Chagall and Picasso. The gallery's greatest attraction, though, is the Canadian section on the first floor, featuring a cross-section of work from the Group of Seven, a group of early twentieth-century painters whose work embodies the sublime beauty of the country's boreal wilderness. There is also the Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery, as well as The Grange, a restored nineteenth-century house.

317 Dundas Street West
Tel: (416) 979 6648. Fax: (416) 977 8547.
Web site: www.ago.net
Transport: Subway St Patrick.
Opening hours: Tues, Thurs and Fri 1100-1800, Wed 1100-2030, Sat and Sun 1000-1730.
Admission: C$6 (suggested donation).

Bata Shoe Museum
: Another relative eccentric in this clean, efficient city, the Bata Shoe Museum is the only museum of its kind in the world. Housed in an equally unusual building, shaped, appropriately enough, like a shoebox, the museum owns some 10,000 items of footwear covering 4500 years of footwear history. Pieces range from Elvis Presley's loafers and Queen Victoria's ballroom slippers to nineteenth-century beaded native American shoes and leather broad-toed Tudor shoes.

327 Bloor Street West
Tel: (416) 979 7799. Fax: (416) 979 0078.
Web site: www.batashoemuseum.ca
Transport: Subway St George.
Opening hours: Tues, Wed, Fri and Sat 1000-1700, Thurs 1000-2000, Sun 1200-1700.
Admission: C$6 (concessions available).

Royal Ontario Museum
: The entrance hall alone is reason enough to visit the Royal Ontario Museum - two massive native American totem poles from British Columbia flank the stairs, underneath a beautiful golden mosaic ceiling. Deeper within, the museum offers a seeming mishmash of different collections. The exhibits representing the Far East include a renowned collection of Chinese art, including wall paintings, snuff bottles and ceramic head cushions, as well as the only complete example of a Ming tomb in the west. Other levels handle the life sciences, the ancient Mediterranean and a Canadian heritage collection.

100 Queen's Park
Tel: (416) 586 5549. Fax: (416) 586 5863.
E-mail: info@rom.on.ca
Web site: www.rom.on.ca
Transport: Subway Museum.
Opening hours: Mon-Thurs, Sat and Sun 1000-1800, Fri 1000-2130.
Admission: C$15 (Mon-Fri); C$20 (Sat and Sun); free (Fri 1630-2130); concessions available.

Ontario Science Centre
: The Ontario Science Centre was opened in 1969 with a mission to 'open minds to science by creating environments which excite curiosity, inspire insights and motivate learning in science and technology'. This difficult task is successfully accomplished with over 800 fascinating exhibits. Themes explored in-depth include Space, the Human Body, and the Information Highway. Interactive exhibits include piloting a spacecraft, or touching a Van der Graaf generator to make one's hair stand up on end. An omnimax theatre offers a 24m (79ft) dome screen.

770 Don Mills Road
Tel: (416) 696 3127. Fax: (416) 696 3166.
E-mail: info@osc.on.ca
Web site: www.osc.on.ca
Transport: Subway Eglinton/Pape.
Opening hours: Daily 1000-1700.
Admission: C$10 (concessions available); plus C$10 (Omnimax Cinema).

Toronto Zoo
: Situated on a sprawling, forested piece of land next to the Rouge Valley in the suburb of Scarborough, the Toronto Zoo is the fourth largest zoo in the world. The collection of animals is truly international, since the zoo features pavilions named Africa, the Americas, IndoMalaya, Australasia, the Indian Rhino, Gaur, and the Malayan Woods. Underwater exhibits showcase polar bears, South African fur seals, beavers in their dens and otters swimming at eye level.

Meadowvale Road/Highway 401
Tel: (416) 392 5900. Fax: (416) 392 5863.
Web site: www.torontozoo.com
Transport: Subway Kennedy, then bus 86A.
Opening hours: Daily 0930-1800 (varies seasonally).
Admission: C$13 (concessions available).

Fort York
: Fort York harks back to the days when Toronto, then as British as afternoon tea, was named 'York'. As a colony, the city occasionally had to deal with pesky revolutionaries to the south, so Fort York was founded in 1793 to compound British control of Lake Ontario. Most of the buildings, however, date from 1814 because, during the earlier war, the evacuating British blew up the gunpowder magazine - an explosion so unexpectedly large that it killed ten of their own men, 250 advancing Americans and a good deal of the fort. Highlights of Fort York include blockhouses, barracks, officers' quarters, costumed staff and period demonstrations.

100 Garrison Road, at Bathurst Street
Tel: (416) 392 6907. Fax: (416) 392 6917.
E-mail: info@torontohistory.on.ca
Transport: Subway Bathurst Station.
Opening hours: Daily 1000-1700.
Admission: C$5 (concessions available).

Paramount Canada's Wonderland
: Located in the northern suburb of Maple, Canada's Wonderland is, as its name suggests, an amusement park. Although not on the same scale as a Disney or Universal theme park, the park features over 200 attractions on 134 hectares (330 acres). Rides include Cliffhanger, Scooby-Doo's Haunted Mansion, Mountain Eruption and Meteor Attack.

9580 Jane Street
Tel: (905) 832 8131. Fax: (905) 832 7419.
E-mail: info@canadaswonderland.com
Web site: www.canadaswonderland.com
Transport: Highway 400.
Opening hours: Jun-Aug daily 1000-2200; May, Sep and Oct varying days and times.
Admission: C$42.99 (concessions available).



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ENTERTAINMENT
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