Four Seasons Hotel Montreal ★★★★★

Rue de la Montagne, Where the Square Mile Still Shops

Montreal's luxury hotels tend to be conversions: a bank, a warehouse, a nineteenth-century terrace pressed into service. This one is not. It went up new on rue de la Montagne and opened in May 2019, designed by Lemay with Sid Lee Architecture, which means the floor plates, the glass and the services were drawn for a hotel rather than fitted into someone else's walls. You notice it in the rooms, where the windows run floor to ceiling and the light behaves properly, and in the way the public floors run into one another. A hundred and fifty rooms, nineteen suites, and eighteen private residences above.

Why It Works

Four Seasons is a known quantity, so the question is what this particular house does with it. Three answers. The interiors are by Gilles & Boissier of Paris with Philip Hazan of Montreal, warmer and more tactile than the brand's usual register. The Social Square, Atelier Zébulon Perron's work, gives the ground floor somewhere to sit that Montrealers use whether or not they have a room upstairs. And the Guerlain spa is the only Forbes five-star spa in the city, which settles the wellness question outright. This is a hotel locals walk into for reasons other than a bed.

Why This Location

Rue de la Montagne runs through the Golden Square Mile, the stretch of downtown where nineteenth-century Montreal built its houses and where the city still shops. The most literal proof sits on the third floor: a door that opens directly into Holt Renfrew Ogilvy, so the walk to the department store happens indoors, which you will appreciate in February. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is about five minutes away on foot, the Bell Centre roughly ten, and Sainte-Catherine and Crescent are immediately around the corner, which sets the tone of the evening if you let it.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxury

• Vibe: purpose-built, contemporary, downtown Montreal at full volume

• Rooms: 150 rooms and 19 suites, floor-to-ceiling windows, free-standing tubs in the premium categories, with 18 private residences above

• Best For: shoppers and gallery-goers in the Square Mile, business travellers who want the spa floor, couples on a city weekend

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the third-floor door into Holt Renfrew Ogilvy, indoors, in any weather

• Dining: MARCUS, a reinvented brasserie under executive chef Jason Morris, 124 covers plus 45 at the bar, Alexandra Guay on wine and Jay Lawson on cocktails, with a lounge and a nightbar alongside

• Amenities: Guerlain Spa, eight treatment rooms including a couples suite, hydrotherapy and saunas; sky-lit indoor pool with an upstream current generator; 2,150 square foot gym open around the clock, laid out by Harley Pasternak; the Belvédère terrace; pets welcome; a self-guided tour of the art collection

• Attractions: Holt Renfrew Ogilvy through the third floor, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts about five minutes on foot, the Bell Centre about ten

Gilles & Boissier Upstairs, Zébulon Perron on the Ground Floor

The division of labour is worth knowing, because it explains how the hotel feels as you move through it. Gilles & Boissier, working with Philip Hazan, took the guest floors: dark timber, deep fabrics, free-standing tubs in the premium categories, glass running the full height of the wall. Atelier Zébulon Perron took the Social Square and gave it the register of a bar rather than a lobby, which is why it fills with people who are not guests. The art is the hotel's own collection, and the self-guided tour of it is a better use of an hour than it sounds.

MARCUS, and the Hours After Dinner

MARCUS calls itself a reinvented brasserie and the room backs that up: 124 covers in the dining room, another 45 at the bar, under executive chef Jason Morris. Alexandra Guay runs the wine list and Jay Lawson the cocktails, and neither is an afterthought. The lounge and the nightbar carry the evening on afterwards, which in this part of downtown means late. If you would rather eat elsewhere, Crescent and Sainte-Catherine are a short walk and the concierge will send you to the right table rather than the nearest one.

A Wellness Floor That Earns Its Own Trip

The spa is Guerlain: eight treatment rooms including a couples suite, hydrotherapy, saunas, and the only Forbes five-star rating in Montreal. The pool is indoor and sky-lit, thirty-three feet by fifteen, shallow throughout, with an upstream current generator for anyone who wants to swim rather than float. The gym runs to 2,150 square feet, opens at any hour and was laid out by Harley Pasternak. Above it, the Belvédère terrace takes eighty people when the weather allows, which in Montreal is a season rather than a year.