Toronto

Toronto is not a city of savage natural drama or medieval alleys, but proof that you can build an urban giant that is also clean, safe, functional and, above all, extremely diverse. It sits on the shore of vast Lake Ontario, presents a futuristic skyline dominated by the iconic CN Tower, and works as the economic and cultural heart of Canada — but its real magic is not in the concrete and glass of the skyscrapers; it is in its neighbourhoods: a wild mosaic of communities from every corner of the earth living side by side, so that within a short walk you cross from Little Italy to Chinatown and carry on into hipster districts full of third-wave coffee shops, vintage stores and graffiti. On the surface it is a cool, polite city, but beneath it beats a young, artistic and culinary pulse among the best in North America, offering a bit of everything — without the excessive, pressured show of New York. Its essence lives in Kensington Market, the city’s anarchic, colourful heart — a maze of alleys full of little cafés, second-hand shops, Mexican, Jamaican and Vietnamese street-food stalls and graffiti-covered walls, with no big chains, only independent businesses and a free, kicking energy; on the Toronto Islands, the perfect escape from the concrete — a 15-minute ride on a simple ferry from downtown to a green, car-free chain of islands, where you rent bikes, walk among small cottages, picnic by the water and get the most beautiful skyline view of downtown from across the lake; and in the Distillery District, a historic area of nineteenth-century red-brick buildings that once housed the largest whisky distillery in the world, now given a complete makeover into a beautiful pedestrian-only quarter full of art galleries, cafés, local breweries and designer restaurants.

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