Rue Sainte-Catherine
Rue Sainte-Catherine, also called Sainte-Catherine Street in English, is the primary commercial artery of downtown Montreal. Major retailers like the Hudson's Bay Company, Les Ailes de la Mode, La Maison Simons, Archambault, La Senza, Future Shop, Ogilvy, and Roots have large stores along the street. Additionally, many of Montreal's most prominent shopping complexes, including the Faubourg Sainte-Catherine, the Centre Eaton, les Cours Mont-Royal (a high fashion shopping mall), the Complexe Desjardins, Place Dupuis, Plaza Alexis-Nihon, Westmount Square, and Place Montreal Trust all make their home along this street.
Strip clubs which famously made their home on Sainte-Catherine have now declined in numbers, though a few prominent clubs, such as the infamous Supersexe, do remain along the length of the street.
The street runs parallel to the largest segments of Montreal's famous underground city. The series of interconnected office tower basements and shopping complexes (mentioned above) that make up this main thoroughfare lie immediately north of Sainte-Catherine.
The green line of the Montreal Metro was built to serve rue Sainte-Catherine; however, to avoid disrupting traffic on the street, it was built one block to the north, under what would later become boul. de Maisonneuve.
Montreal's Place des Arts, the city's primary concert venue, is located on Ste-Catherine between Jeanne-Mance and Saint-Urbain Streets.
The street is also home to the Christ Church Cathedral, the only church in Canada that sits atop a shopping mall, les Promenades de la Cathedrale.
Sainte-Catherine Street runs east-west from de Maisonneuve Boulevard and Claremont Avenue in Westmount (in the west) to Viau Boulevard in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (in the east). However, the main commercial strip of Sainte-Catherine Street is generally known to extend from Atwater Avenue in the west to Papineau Avenue in the east.
Sainte-Catherine Street is also the centre of the gay village between Saint-Hubert Street and Papineau Avenue.