DK Travel : Toronto : Places of interest

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Alex Farms

A cheese lover’s paradise, in South Market, selling every kind of cheese imaginable, from French cantal to the most pungent of blues. Good raw-milk cheese selection.
Allan Gardens

This large park embodies the contradictions of the downtown-eastside: It is both grand and gritty. Best explored during the day, the gardens, which first opened in 1860, contain a delightful glass-and-metal conservatory complex consisting of six greenhouses, each with a different climate zone, built in 1910. Inside, the exuberant displays of seasonal and permanent greenery and flowers delight the senses.
Art Gallery of Ontario

Particularly strong in historical and contemporary Canadian works, and host to important exhibitions, this is one of the country’s top art galleries (see Art Gallery of Ontario).
Bata Shoe Museum

This unusual, specialized museum celebrates footwear form and function throughout the ages and around the world. The building’s playful design, echoing a stylized shoebox, houses four galleries exhibiting everything from Roman sandals to Elton John’s platform boots. The exhibit of Chinese bound-foot shoes is not for the squeamish. Founded by Sonia Bata, who has scoured the world for shoes of every description, the museum also holds interesting themed exhibitions (see Bata Shoe Museum).
Black Creek Pioneer Village

For an authentic taste of early settler life, visit this re-creation of a 19th-century rural Ontario community. Among the dozens of buildings – a handful original to the site, the rest moved here and restored – are a school, a church, village shops, houses, and barns. The grounds include an orchard, millpond, restored gardens, and grazing livestock. Costumed staff demonstrate pioneer crafts and carry out tasks such as tinsmithing and milling flour (the flour is available for sale). Free wagon rides are popular with the kids.
Bradley Museum

This collection of early-19th-century buildings offers a window on the past. The 1830 farmhouse was built by Lewis and Elizabeth Bradley, United Empire Loyalists who left the US and settled in Ontario, raising seven children. The restored house features period artifacts. The Anchorage, also on the grounds, is a Regency-style cottage originally home to Royal Navy officer John Skynner. It offers rotating exhibitions and, the last Sunday of the month, afternoon tea.
Buskers and Craft-Sellers

Lively street action is part of the charm of market Saturdays, as buskers entertain and craftspeople ply their wares outside both the north and south buildings.
Cabbagetown

Settled in the 1840s by hardscrabble Irish immigrants who grew cabbages in their front gardens to help make ends meet, this area east of Sherbourne St between Wellesley St E and Gerrard St E is today almost completely gentrified. Picturesque cottages and Victorian rowhouses with their lovely gardens are rich in vernacular architectural history, rewarding exploration (see Cabbagetown).
Cabbagetown

One of Toronto’s earliest subdivisions, dating to the 1840s, this district remained a working-class community well into the 1970s. Many of the cottages and Victorian homes have since been renovated, and it is now an upscale residential enclave that makes for a pleasant stroll. On the east side is Riverdale Park and its delightful Riverdale Farm (see Riverdale Farm). Across the street, on the grounds of the Necropolis Cemetery, is a chapel built in 1872, a Gothic Revival treasure. At the north end of Cabbagetown, St. James Cemetery, Toronto’s oldest, has many beautiful crypts (see Cabbagetown).
Campbell House

The oldest remaining building from the town of York, which in 1834 became Toronto, this Georgian mansion was built in 1822 for William Campbell, an Upper Canada judge. In 1972, the 300-ton building was moved from its original location on Adelaide St to its present location, restored, and opened to the public. Guided tours are available.