Across the street from the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), this plaza is a focus of summer activity in Vieux-Montréal. The area has two recently repaved streets bracketing a center promenade that slopes down to the port past venerable stone buildings from the 1700s. Outdoor cafes, street performers, flower sellers, and horse-drawn carriages that gather at the plaza's base recall a Montréal of a century ago. Montréalers insist they would never go to a place so overrun by tourists -- which makes one wonder why so many of them do, in fact, congregate here. They take the sun and sip sangria on the bordering terraces on warm days, enjoying the unfolding pageant just as much as visitors do.