Royal Ontario Museum: Toronto Travel Guide (4.7★)

A crystal stuck onto a 1914 museum

You can’t miss the building. Aluminium and glass shards stick out over Bloor Street West at sharp angles. This is the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, Daniel Libeskind’s addition that opened in 2007. Behind it stands the original heritage building, which opened in 1914.

You enter through the Crystal at 100 Queens Park. Inside, the angles carry on: walls lean, display cases tilt, and the stairs go up through the gaps between galleries. Museum Station on Line 1 (Yonge–University) puts you out about a minute from the door. St. George Station, where Lines 1 and 2 meet, is one stop away.

Which galleries to see first

The museum is huge, so pick before you go. Most first-time visitors head for these:

• Age of Dinosaurs galleries: full fossil skeletons on raised platforms. The long-necked Barosaurus, nicknamed Gordo, stretches across most of the room.
• The bat cave: a recreated cave you walk through in low light. Children love it.
• Chinese collections: large Buddhist and Daoist temple murals, plus one of the strongest Chinese holdings outside Asia.
• Ancient Egypt: mummies and coffins, displayed with tomb objects.
• First Peoples art: tall crest poles from the Pacific Northwest run up the heritage building’s stairwell.

Two floors of natural history and two of world cultures take three to four hours if you go slowly. If you have 90 minutes, stick to the dinosaurs and one culture gallery.

Getting in ahead of the weekend crowd

Weekends are where the ROM gets hard work. From 11am to 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays the dinosaur hall and the Crystal lobby fill up, and families with strollers back up at the lifts. If a weekend is your only option, be in line for the 10am opening and visit the dinosaurs first, before the crowds.

Opening hours change with the seasons and on holidays, so check the official site for this month’s schedule before you go. At the moment the museum is closed every Monday and opens 10am–5:30pm the other six days.

Buy a timed ticket online and you skip the ticket desk and walk straight to the entrance scanner. Ticket prices and special-exhibition add-ons are listed on the ROM website. Card and mobile payment are normal here, like most places in Toronto. There’s a coat check, and in winter it saves you carrying a parka through four floors.

Pick up a floor map at the entrance. The way the new and old buildings join means you can’t always follow one floor straight through. Galleries can end without warning, and you may have to go back down a level to reach the next wing.

The blocks around Queen’s Park

Plenty else is close by, so you can make a day of it. Across Queen’s Park sits the Gardiner Museum, which covers ceramics and is much smaller and quieter. Walk west along Bloor to St. George Street and you reach the Bata Shoe Museum.

Just south, the University of Toronto’s St. George campus has Gothic Revival college buildings like Hart House and University College. They’re free to wander between galleries. North and east of the museum is Yorkville, with boutiques and cafés on Cumberland and Yorkville Avenues. It’s an easy lunch stop if you leave and come back.