Montreal City Hall

This guide to Montreal City Hall centers on the evening of July 24, 1967, when French president Charles de Gaulle rode up from the harbor to a crowd so loud he said it reminded him of Paris after its liberation. He wasn't scheduled to speak, but the crowd wouldn't stop chanting his name, and Montreal's mayor Jean Drapeau watched him step out onto the balcony above the entrance anyway. That same balcony had already survived a 1922 fire that gutted the building down to its outer limestone walls.