Hochelaga-Maisonneuve: the leaning tower and the working east end
The tilted Olympic tower, the old Marché Maisonneuve, and the murals on a reviving Rue Ontario. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Stade olympique
Step out at Viau and the stadium is on you at once — the 1976 bowl Roger Taillibert designed, with the tower leaning over it at 45 degrees, the tallest inclined structure in the world. Stand under it before you decide what you think of it; nobody is neutral.

2. Esplanade and the Tour de Montréal
The funicular up the tower is a separate ticket and you don't need it for the walk — but the esplanade beneath it is free, and the way the cables fan down to the roof is the best angle on the whole strange thing. Walk the plaza, then head west.

3. Château Dufresne
On the corner of Pie-IX, the beaux-arts mansion two brothers built themselves in 1918, back when this was the ambitious independent city of Maisonneuve. A small museum now. The point is the contrast — civic grandeur a block from the Olympic concrete.

4. Marché Maisonneuve
The old market hall of 1914, with Alfred Laliberté's bronze fountain out front — a domed civic statement from a town that wanted to be a capital. The market moved to the modern hall beside it; the old building is the landmark. Worth the small detour south.

5. Rue Ontario Est
The neighbourhood's spine, long working-class and lately reviving — third-wave coffee next to taverns that never left, record shops, the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier. Walk it slowly westward; this is where the east end is changing in real time.

6. The murals around Rue Ontario and Pie-IX
Hochelaga's walls carry some of the city's strongest murals, many from the MURAL festival's reach east. They're repainted and added to, so the wall you find won't be the one in the photo. End near Pie-IX station with paint at your back.

Hochelaga-Maisonneuve: the leaning tower and the working east end