Montreal
The Champ-de-Mars is a park in Vieux-Montréal, behind City Hall. Here you can see the remains of the stone walls that surrounded the city in the 1700s. Today it is a park open to everyone.
The stone walls
From 1717 the city was surrounded by a stone wall designed by Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry. A ditch ran between two parallel walls.
Down come the walls
In 1801 a law decided to tear them down. The work lasted from 1804 to 1817. The stones were reused for other buildings, but the foundations stayed underground.
A field for everything
In 1812 the field was enlarged with a large terrace behind the buildings of Rue Notre-Dame. From 1889 the city rented it from the government, on condition that it kept it tidy. From 1899 to the 1920s it held an open-air market, then it became a car park.
Today's park
Between 1986 and 1991, digs brought the foundations of the walls back to light. In 1992 the park was born. A more recent restoration added pale stone slabs, strips of grass and lights on top. In the evening they clearly show the shape of the old walls, which once enclosed the whole old town.
