PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF FOUR SEASONS HOTELS AND RESORTS
The Four Seasons Hotel Montreal opened in May, just in time for this city’s jumping
summer festival schedule, but, befitting its name, this is a luxury palace you can enjoy any time of year—especially during Quebec’s frosty winter. The 169-room-and-suite hotel is smack in the middle of the city’s Golden Square Mile—surrounded by museums, fashionable shops, and McGill University—but here are four ways to live it up in Montreal without even leaving the building.
Wine and Dine
No one questions Montreal’s gastronomic bona fides, but hotel restaurants mostly haven’t been a big part of the scene here. Enter Marcus (pictured, above left), superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson’s first spot in Canada. The sleek fine-dining place recalls the Nordic-inspired cuisine that first earned the Ethiopian-Swedish chef raves (and two Michelin stars) at New York City’s Aquavit. The menu focuses on seafood (witness the colorful cured-fish display at the entrance), with a wide range of raw-bar staples, robata grill offerings, and carefully crafted entrées such as the spaghetti Piccadilly, topped with uni butter and Quebec snow crab.
Get Pampered
The spa’s Kneipp hydrotherapy experience pairs cold and warm foot baths with a walk along a rocky reflexology path designed to stimulate acupressure points. If you want to go a little easier on your dogs, opt for a swim in the skylit indoor pool or a massage—some treatments incorporate antioxidant-rich maple syrup, while others use 24-karat gold, in a nod to the Golden Square Mile.
Dig the Design
The third-floor public space is replete with flashy artistic touches, such as a creepy yet beautiful taxidermy crab (pictured, inset), hand-cut Australian crystal in the lounge, and Instagram-bait restroom mirrors—the ladies’ are set in pink hammam arches (pictured, above right), while the mens’ create an infinity mirror. An open-air atrium displays local artist Pascale Girardin’s nine-
story mobile of aluminum flowers, but the most spectacular vista is from the terrace at Marcus: an unobstructed view of a 10,000-plus-square-foot mural of Montreal’s patron saint, Leonard Cohen.
Shop ’Til You Drop
The hotel shares a block with Holt Renfrew Ogilvy, which, at 250,000 square feet, will be by far the largest department store in Canada when it finishes renovations next year. In fact, the hotel lobby connects directly to the store, so those in search of a little retail therapy won’t have to brave the elements.
