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Rue Sherbrooke crosses half of Montreal island, but other than the Stade Olympique far out east, its most interesting part is the few blocks from McGill University to rue Guy, an elite stretch of private galleries, exclusive hotels and boutiques for the likes of Yves Saint-Laurent, Ralph Lauren and Armani. At the corner of Drummond is the Ritz-Carlton Hotel , Montreal's most ornate hotel - Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton here. Inside, the Claude Lafitte Art Gallery (Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 10am-5pm) is a small gallery with works by Picasso, Miro, Chagall and Canadian artists Riopelle, Fortin, Lemieux, Borduas and Pellan. The hotel remains a symbol of what was once known as the Golden Square Mile , the area between rue Sherbrooke, Cote des Neiges, the mountain and avenue du Parc. From the late nineteenth century to World War II, about seventy percent of Canada's wealth was owned by a few hundred people who lived here. Known as the Caesars of the Wilderness, the majority were Scottish immigrants who made their fortunes in brewing, fur trading and banking, and who financed the railways and steamships that contributed to Montreal's industrial growth. Near the Ritz stands Canada's oldest museum, the Musee des Beaux Arts , with a pavilion on either side of rue Sherbrooke at nos. 1379 and 1380 (Tues & Thurs-Sun 11am-6pm, Wed 11am-9pm; www.mmfa.qc.ca ; $15 for special exhibits, permanent collection free). The Canadian art collection is one of the country's most impressive, covering the spectrum from the devotional works of New France, through paintings of the local landscape by, among others, James Wilson Morrice, Maurice Cullen and Clarence Gagnon, to the more radical canvases by the Automatistes - Paul-Emile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle - who transformed Montreal's art scene in the 1940s. Predictably enough, the Group of Seven get a showing too, but the most accomplished paintings are in the European section, where many of the canvases - by such masters as El Greco, Rembrandt and Memling - were donated by merchants during Montreal's heyday. Their contributions are supplemented by equally high-class later acquisitions by Rodin, Picasso, Henry Moore and other twentieth-century luminaries. Adjoined to the museum, but entered from rue Crescent , a lively street filled with boutiques and bars, the Musee des Arts Decoratifs , 2200 rue Crescent (Tues & Thurs-Sun 11am-6pm, Wed 11am-9pm; free permanent exhibit; www.madm.org ), has a decent display of twentieth century design from the likes of Charles and Ray Eames and Arne Jacobsen in a space designed by architect Frank Gehry. East of the Musee des Beaux-Arts, at the intersection of rue Sherbrooke and Redpath, is another reminder of the Scottish roots of this neighbourhood - the Church of St Andrew and St Paul , the regimental church of the Black Watch, the Highland Regiment of Canada. Though the Gothic Revival building is not particularly impressive, Burne-Jones' stained-glass windows are worth a quick peek. Further east still is the city's most prestigious university, entered through a Neoclassical stone gate at the top of avenue McGill College , a principal boulevard with wide pavements adorned with sculptures, most notably Raymond Mason's Illuminated Crowd , portraying a mass of larger-than-life people - generally faced by an equally large crowd of tourists. The leafy campus of McGill University was founded in 1813 from the bequest of James McGill, a Glaswegian immigrant fur trader, and the university is now world-famous for its medical and engineering schools. The ornate limestone buildings and their modern extensions are perfect for relaxing or for a walk above the street level of downtown. A boulder on the campus near Sherbrooke marks the spot where the original Iroquois village of Hochelaga stood before European penetration. The university boasts a couple of fine museums. In the middle of the campus is the Musee Redpath (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; closed Fri late June to early Sept, Sat year-round; free), the first custom-built Canadian museum, with an eclectic anthropological collection that includes a rare fossil collection, crystals, dinosaur bones and two Egyptian mummies. Better known is the Musee McCord (Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-5pm; $8.50; www.musee-mccord.qc.ca ;), 690 rue Sherbrooke ouest, an extensive museum of Canadian history housed in the elegant nineteenth-century McGill Union building which underwent a $20 million expansion programme. The main part of the collection was amassed by the rich and worthy Scots-Irish McCord family over an eighty-year period from the mid-nineteenth century and represents a highly personal vision of the development of Canada, which they saw as a fusion of colonial and declining native elements. The first few rooms are devoted to a permanent exhibition on the McCord family, followed by space for changing displays from the huge collections. The museum is particularly strong on native artefacts, textiles, costumes and photographs, and examples of these are found in the themed exhibits. The First Nation gallery is the most interesting, with high-quality examples of furs, ivory carvings and superb beadwork, whose aboriginal name translates as "little shining berries".
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