Best Museums in Canada

Ottawa has more national museums than any other city in the country, and you could spend three full days on them. The National Gallery of Canada, Moshe Safdie’s glass-and-granite building on Sussex Drive with Louise Bourgeois’s giant spider Maman outside, holds the finest collection of Canadian and Indigenous art anywhere, including whole rooms of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, and a European collection with work by Klimt and Van Gogh. Allow three hours, and see the reconstructed 19th-century Rideau Street Chapel inside.

Across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, the Canadian Museum of History is one of the most visited museums in Canada. Douglas Cardinal’s curving building faces Parliament Hill, and its Grand Hall holds a row of Pacific Northwest totem poles and house fronts below a wall of windows facing the river. The Canadian History Hall upstairs tells the country’s story from the first peoples to the present, and the Children’s Museum is one of the best for young kids in the country. It is a 20-minute walk across the Alexandra Bridge from the National Gallery.

The Canadian War Museum on LeBreton Flats covers conflicts from early Indigenous warfare to Afghanistan, with tanks, artillery and a powerful First World War gallery. In Memorial Hall, the headstone of the Unknown Soldier is lit by a single window at exactly 11am on 11 November. The Canadian Museum of Nature, in a castle-like 1912 building known as “the Castle”, has a blue whale skeleton, a strong dinosaur gallery and an Arctic gallery.

Further out, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in the east of the city has one of the best aircraft collections in the world, including the surviving nose section of the Avro Arrow, and the Canada Science and Technology Museum has hands-on galleries and the tilting Crazy Kitchen. The Bank of Canada Museum downtown is free. For a Cold War oddity, the Diefenbunker in Carp, 30 minutes west, is a four-storey nuclear bunker you can tour.

The Royal Ontario Museum is Canada’s largest museum of world cultures and natural history. You enter through Daniel Libeskind’s crystal-shaped extension on Bloor Street, and inside are dinosaur galleries, a Ming tomb, a large Chinese collection, the First Peoples gallery and a bat cave that children love. Adult tickets cost roughly C$25 to C$30 (about US$18 to US$22), and four hours goes quickly. The Gardiner Museum of ceramics is across the street, and the Bata Shoe Museum, with 4,500 years of footwear in a building shaped like a shoebox, is a short walk west.

The Art Gallery of Ontario on Dundas Street was remodelled by Frank Gehry, a Toronto native, with a timber-ribbed glass facade and a spiral staircase. It has the largest public collection of Henry Moore sculpture, a deep Canadian collection with Tom Thomson, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, and contemporary Indigenous art. Admission is free for Ontario residents under 25 and on the first Wednesday evening of each month; check the current hours before you go.

The Aga Khan Museum in the north-east suburbs has a fine collection of Islamic art and manuscripts in a white building by Fumihiko Maki, with a formal garden. The Hockey Hall of Fame in Brookfield Place displays the Stanley Cup in the domed hall of a 19th-century bank building and shooting games for every age. The Ontario Science Centre closed its original building in 2024 over roof safety, so check where its exhibits are running now.

North of the city, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg shows the Group of Seven in log-and-stone galleries in the woods, and the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough has moved to a new lakeside building.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is the city’s flagship, five pavilions on Sherbrooke Street covering world art, Quebec and Canadian painting, and decorative arts, with Tiffany stained glass in a converted church that also serves as a concert hall. Its permanent collection is often free for young visitors, while major exhibitions carry a ticket. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal has had its Place des Arts building closed for a long renovation, so check where its shows are running.

In Old Montreal, Pointe-à-Callière, the city’s archaeology and history museum, takes you underground through foundations, a 17th-century cemetery and Montreal’s first collector sewer, on the site where the city was founded. The McCord Stewart Museum opposite McGill University covers social history, costume and the Notman photographs of 19th-century Montreal. The Canadian Centre for Architecture is the best of its kind in North America.

Space for Life, in the east end by the Olympic Stadium, groups the Biodôme, which recreates four ecosystems inside the 1976 Olympic velodrome, the Insectarium, the Planetarium and the Botanical Garden. Combination tickets save money, and a full day there suits families.

In Quebec City, the Musée de la civilisation in the Lower Town has thoughtful exhibitions on Quebec and First Nations history. The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec on the Plains of Abraham has four connected pavilions, a strong Inuit art collection and the glassy Pierre Lassonde Pavilion. The Citadelle, still an active military base, has a regimental museum and guided tours, with the changing of the guard on summer mornings.

The Museum of Anthropology at UBC is the most beautiful museum in western Canada. Arthur Erickson’s concrete-and-glass Great Hall frames totem poles against the trees and the sea, and the museum holds Bill Reid’s yellow cedar carving The Raven and the First Men, along with a huge open-storage collection from around the world. The Great Hall reopened in 2024 after earthquake strengthening. It is on the university campus about 30 minutes by bus from downtown Vancouver; allow three hours.

Downtown, the Vancouver Art Gallery in the old courthouse has the largest collection of Emily Carr’s paintings, and the Bill Reid Gallery a block away shows Northwest Coast art. Science World, in the geodesic dome built for Expo 86 on False Creek, is the city’s best rainy-day stop with children.

In Victoria, the Royal BC Museum on the harbour beside the Parliament Buildings is known for its natural history dioramas and old town street scenes; parts of it have closed for redevelopment, so check which galleries are open. In Whistler, the Audain Art Museum has Emily Carr paintings and a strong collection of Northwest Coast masks. On Haida Gwaii, the Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llnagaay in Skidegate has carved poles, canoes and a museum run by the Haida Nation.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology near Drumheller is one of the world’s great dinosaur museums, with dozens of mounted skeletons, a preparation lab where you watch technicians clean fossils and a display of Burgess Shale fossils. It is about 90 minutes’ drive north-east of Calgary through the badlands, and summer guided hikes and fossil digs book up. Two hours further south-east, Dinosaur Provincial Park is the World Heritage site where many of the fossils were found, with guided tours into restricted areas.

South of Calgary near Fort Macleod, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is an interpretive centre built into a sandstone cliff, explaining how the Blackfoot drove bison over it for some 6,000 years. In Calgary itself, the Glenbow has been closed for a major rebuild; check whether it has reopened before planning around it. In Edmonton, the Royal Alberta Museum, in a new downtown building since 2018, is the largest museum in western Canada.

Winnipeg has two of the most striking buildings in the country. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights at The Forks climbs through galleries on glowing alabaster ramps to the Tower of Hope, with frank sections on residential schools and the Holocaust. The Manitoba Museum has a full-size replica of the Nonsuch, the ship whose 1668 voyage led to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Qaumajuq at the Winnipeg Art Gallery holds the world’s largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art. In Saskatchewan, Saskatoon’s Remai Modern has a large collection of Picasso linocuts, and Regina’s RCMP Heritage Centre tells the Mounties’ story.

Halifax has two museums on its waterfront worth a morning. The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 is in the shed where about a million immigrants landed between 1928 and 1971, and many visitors look up family arrival records there. The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic covers the Titanic, whose victims were brought to Halifax, and the 1917 Halifax Explosion. The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia has the tiny painted house of folk artist Maud Lewis.

In St John’s, The Rooms combines the provincial museum, art gallery and archives in a building above the harbour with the best view in the city. In Cape Breton, the reconstructed 18th-century French Fortress of Louisbourg has costumed interpreters in summer. In the north, the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse covers Ice Age mammals such as woolly mammoths, and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife covers the Dene and Inuit of the Northwest Territories. For the history behind all of these, see our Canada history guide.

Most major museums open around 10am and close at 5pm, with one late evening a week, and several close on Mondays outside summer; check before you go, especially on public holidays. Adult tickets at the big museums usually run between about C$15 and C$30, children pay less and under-fives are usually free. Several museums have free or reduced hours one evening a week, and the Bank of Canada Museum is always free. Special exhibitions often need a separate, timed ticket, so book those online.

Toronto’s CityPASS bundles the ROM with the CN Tower, Casa Loma and Ripley’s Aquarium and is worth it if you plan to see most of them. In Montreal, many museums open free on Montreal Museums Day in late May, and combination tickets cover the Space for Life sites. In Ottawa, the History and War museums sell joint tickets; an annual membership can make sense if you visit several Ingenium museums (Aviation and Space, Science and Technology, and Agriculture and Food).

Bags larger than a small daypack usually go to the cloakroom. Non-flash photography for personal use is generally allowed in permanent galleries but often banned in temporary exhibitions. Some Indigenous objects and ceremonial items may not be photographed, and labels say so. Galleries on residential schools, as at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, can be upsetting; the museums flag them and offer quiet spaces.