Place des Arts

In 2002, as Place des Arts rebuilt its downtown Montreal plaza, a design team faced a small decision about the color of a new fountain basin covering over five hundred square meters, when every civic fountain in the city had always been blue. This guide follows what they chose instead, and how that basin has been reinvented by a different artist nearly every summer since. It traces the tradition back to the symphony's 1963 opening and the Jazz Festival crowds that still fill this esplanade every July.