The free and festive light-filled holiday pop-up Winter Gardens is now open in downtown Montreal

This weekend marked the opening of les Jardins d'Hiver (Winter Gardens) in downtown Montreal, where a section of Saint-Catherine West between Complexe Desjardins and Place des Arts has been made into a pop-up Christmas village to explore between shopping and picking up something to eat at restaurants in the area.

It's a markedly different experience when compared to the eye-catching Christmas markets that have opened recently at Atwater Market and Jean-Talon, where there are vendors and food for sale. At the Winter Gardens, it's more of a huge art installation pop-up to draw Montrealers toward downtown and give them a place to explore.

Visitors will find small dioramas of Christmas scenes in the windows of chalets, a small maze of white reflectors (an attraction served up to Montrealers in past years), and generally a lot of scenery to get a holiday Instagram shot for your feed.

Taken on its own, the space is actually on the small side, but when combined with the LOOP art installations that went up in the Place des Festivals as part of Montreal's seasonal Luminothérapie, plus the huge glowing orbs of the New Moon installation? There's enough to do.

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