Place d’Armes and Notre-Dame Basilica
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Transcript
Place d'Armes is a compact argument about who ruled Montréal. Notre-Dame Basilica represents the power of French Catholic society. Across the square, the Bank of Montreal represents British and Scottish commercial power. Nearby stands the old Sulpician seminary.
The present basilica opened in the nineteenth century, when Montréal was expanding rapidly. Its Gothic Revival architecture was modern for its time, not a survival from New France.
The statue of Maisonneuve in the centre arrived in 1895, more than two centuries after the city's founding. Like many founder monuments, it tells us as much about the era that erected it as the person it depicts.
Church, finance and civic memory all compete visually here. Montréal's communities were not sealed worlds; they built different institutions while sharing the same city.