Sillery - Avenue Maguire

While Sillery is a bit removed from the city centre, it's clearly worth going out of your way to experience the bustling life around Avenue Maguire, its major shopping street. Over the span of a few hundred metres, the latest fashionable boutiques, excellent restaurants and cafés where you can sit and relax are huddled together tightly. In summer, you'll gladly settle onto a terrace for a glass of wine or a latte, which you can sip peacefully while you watch the Avenue's street life.

Local products and specialties fill the menus of the little bistros that line Avenue Maguire, a definite highlight. We love tasting and discovering the talent of local producers, but there's always room for a wonderful culinary trip to the four corners of planet food. Fine pizzas, delicate sushi, perfect tapas, succulent grilled chicken and many more delicacies are in store for you!

On the other hand, bakeries, pastry shops, tea houses, ice-cream parlours and chocolate shops allow you to fill your bag with sweets and tasty surprises you can give away as gifts... or eat yourself when no one's looking!

To help you digest, go for a walk nearby and wander into the side streets, where you'll find 200-year-old pastel-coloured dwellings that look like doll houses. A bit further to the north-east, you'll find the majestic Bois-de-Coulonge park, which embodies all of Sillery's grace and refinement, with its walking trails, arboretum, flower gardens and breathtaking view of the river.

Upon its creation in 1637, Sillery was originally a seigneury occupied by Jesuit missionaries. Over the centuries, given the territory's vast lands, the area became a well-to-do suburb favoured by rich English families wishing to establish their villas there. Still today, Sillery has an air of New England about it. You just need to go and admire Villa Bagatelle or the Domaine Cataraqui's beautiful vegetable garden, and you'll fall under the spell of this neighbourhood in no time!