In the heart of Old Montréal, Place Royale is one of the city’s oldest sites. Long before the arrival of European settlers, indigenous peoples set up camp here and traded goods. Excavations carried out in the 1980s uncovered artifacts dating back more than 2,000 years. Then… the French settled here in turn.

With French settlement, the space changed its face, yet kept its role as a place of exchange: the fur trade was carried on here. In 1676, the Sulpicians made it a public square. It was then called Place du marché, a name made official in 1706, since a market was held there twice a week.

The square kept this function until 1836, when the Custom House was built on it. It then took the name Custom House Square. However, the new square did not acquire its final dimensions and shape until the Harbour Commissioners, between 1838 and 1845, purchased the properties on the south side of the former market. Not until 1857 was a formal square—made up of a central fountain surrounded by a green space and enclosed by an iron fence—finally laid out. In 1892, to mark the 250th anniversary of Montréal’s founding, the site received its current name: Place Royale.

Beginning in the 1980s, archaeological excavations uncovered the city’s earliest traces of human occupation. For Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal’s archaeology and history complex, it is an invaluable site, bringing together every period of Montréal’s past and preserving its remains, now open to the public.