Aside from the Notre-Dame Basilica, this might be the most photographed area in Old Montreal—and it’s a big beast of a building: beautiful, like so many in this neighborhood, and often illuminated at night. The place is famous for having been visited by French President General de Gaulle in 1967, though it has some interesting early history, including its survival of a fire in 1922. The building was constructed between 1872 and 1878, and still displays physical evidence that it was part of a fortified town in the seventeenth century. There are tours, of course, though residents (like myself) prefer not to see the inside (as beautiful as it is) since that usually means one thing: parking tickets.