Quartier des Spectacles: the festival squares and Rue Saint-Denis
Place des Arts, the festival squares, the Grande Bibliothèque, and the cafés of the Quartier Latin. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Place des Arts
Start at the performing-arts complex and its broad esplanade — the heart of the festival district, and the stage for the jazz festival each summer. Even on an ordinary evening the fountains and the lit terraces give you the measure of it.

2. Place des Festivals
The square beside it, built for crowds, with a long run of programmable fountains and, in winter, the Luminothérapie light installations. Cross it slowly after dark; the lighting is the point and it's free.

3. Rue Sainte-Catherine — the Village edge
Walk east along Sainte-Catherine toward the Quartier Latin. In summer the stretch into the Village is pedestrianised and strung with overhead installations. A good street to walk rather than a stop to stand at.

4. Grande Bibliothèque
Quebec's national library at the corner by Berri-UQAM, a calm wood-and-glass box you're welcome to walk into and sit in. Go up a floor for the reading rooms and the view back over the quarter. A good place to escape the weather mid-walk.

5. Rue Saint-Denis
The spine of the Quartier Latin, climbing north — terrasses, bookshops, and the student bars of the UQAM crowd. This is where you eat. Walk uphill a few blocks, pick a terrasse, and let the evening run.

6. Carré Saint-Louis
End at the leafy square ringed with painted Victorian rowhouses, a few blocks up Saint-Denis — the prettiest pause on the walk and a writers' address for over a century. Then back down to Berri-UQAM for the metro.

Quartier des Spectacles: the festival squares and Rue Saint-Denis