St Lawrence Market & Hall

Old York's sensational market has been a neighborhood meeting place for over two centuries. The restored, high-trussed 1845 South Market building houses more than 50 specialty food stalls: cheese vendors, fishmongers, butchers, bakers and pasta makers with lots of action and yelling of prices in silly voices. Inside the old council chambers upstairs, the St Lawrence Market Gallery (admission free; 10am-4pm Wed-Fri, 9am-4pm Sat, noon-4pm Sun) is now the city's exhibition hall, with rotating displays of paintings, photographs, documents and historical relics. Hordes of school kids laugh it up, perhaps not as enthralled as you might be. On the opposite side of Front St, the dull-looking North Market is redeemed by a Saturday farmers ' market and a Sunday antique market. After being sadly neglected, it was rebuilt around the time of Canada's 100th birthday in 1967. A few steps further north, the glorious St Lawrence Hall (1849), topped by a mansard roof and a working, copper-clad clock tower that can be seen for blocks, is considered one of Toronto's finest examples of Victorian classicism.