Neighbourhoods

Borough Ville-Marie

• Centre-Ville (Downtown) - the main commercial and business area with many hotels and restaurants. Residential buildings do exist, but their density is not very high.
• Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) - the historic part of Montreal roughly corresponding to the city's 18th and 19th century layout. The neighbourhood features some of the city's oldest (and, many say, most beautiful) buildings.
• The Cité Multimédia - a former industrial suburb with some residential buildings, just west of Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal).
• The Quartier International - a new, mostly office and commercial neighbourhood just north of Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal).
• The Quartier des Spectacles - a new neighbourhood under (re)development. As the name implies, le Quartier des Spectacles is home to many entertainment venues.
• Shaughnessy Village - a lively, studenty area west of rue Guy.
• The Quartier Latin - a small area next to the campus of the UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal).
• The Village - an area east of the Quartier Latin, which lives up to its unofficial name.
• The The General Hospital Area - the area at the foot of the mountain, north of rue Sherbrooke.
• Chinatown - sometimes called "Chinablock" because of its miniscule size.

Borough Le Plateau Mont Royal

• Le Plateau - one of the hippest areas of the city boasting a lion's share of the city's restaurants and bars.
• Mile End - previously known simply as the north-western part of the Plateau, Mile End has been considered a separate neighbourhood for many years now. It is more linguistically mixed than the predominantly francophone Plateau.
• McGill Ghetto - a small area just east of McGill University populated by its (mostly anglo) students. The "ghetto" moniker is somewhat misleading - the area is neither dangerous nor particularly rundown - at least, nothing beyond what one would expect from a student-infested neighbourhood.

Borough Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

A large, mostly residential borough which consists of two mega-neighbourhoods:

• Côte-des-Neiges
• Notre Dame de Grâce

Borough Sud-Ouest

• Griffintown - an old (and until recently, neglected) Irish neighbourhood located just steps from downtown Montreal.
• Saint-Henri - a gentrifying working-class neighbourhood just west of Rue Atwater.
• Point St-Charles

Borough Outremont

A mainly francophone residential area located just north of the mountain. In many ways, Outremont is similar to Westmount, except for the fact that it's mostly francophone whereas Westmount is predominantly anglophone.

Municipality of Westmount

Westmount is a predominantly English-speaking residential district located just west of Shaughnessy Village. Since January 1, 2006 is it one of the self-governing areas of Montreal.

( See comments^* below about suburban municipalities. )

OTHER BOROUGHS

• Verdun
• LaSalle
• Lachine
• Saint-Laurent
• Ahuntisic-Cartierville
• Villeray - Saint-Michel - Parc-Extension
• Rosemont - La Petite-Patrie
• Mercier - Hochelaga - Maisonneuve
• Anjou
• Rivières-des-Prairies - Pointe-aux-Trembles
• Saint-Léonard
• Montréal-Nord
• Pierrefonds
• L'Île-Bizard - Sainte-Geneviève
• Roxboro

For details on the separation of the 19 districts and 15 "suburban cities" see Montreal Merger and Demerger (wikipedia.org)

MONTREAL's NORTH, EAST, SOUTH AND WEST

A note of caution about local geographic terminology. The city is laid out on something resembling a grid, but its orientation is such that it'd be very inconvenient to give directions in precise geographic terms (e.g. "you need to go NorthEast from here"). So, in Montréal, the meaning of the words "East", "West", "North" and "South" has been changed to mean "NorthEast", "SouthWest", "NorthWest" and "SouthEast", respectively.

IN CONTENXT: MONTREAL METRO

Thus far, we've only talked about what's located on the island of Montréal. Around it, in what's known as the Montréal Metro Area (or CMM, Communauté Métropolitaine de Montréal) are located other territories of Montreal metro.

The other four "pieces" to this puzzle shown here on a very schematic map, are called South and North Shore (Couronne Nord and Sud), Laval and Longueuil.