In the December Newsletter we began exploring Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the site of the 2008 ICA Conference. Montreal is a cosmopolitan and truly international city, known for its French flair in art, culture, shopping, and cuisine. December's article discussed Old Montreal, the most historic section of town and Canada's former financial district. In this issue, our focus moves downward - not south, but vertically down - into Montreal's Underground City.

In 1962, architect I.M. Pei designed an underground shopping center in the basement of the Place Ville Marie skyscraper. It grew with the construction of the Montreal Metro a few years later, with more underground retailers opening and a system of pedestrian tunnels connecting the subway stations; soon access passageways from the city's major office buildings and hotels were added, creating a network underneath the downtown area.

Today, the 1960s network is only the central segment of the Underground City, known as "RESO" (or "the Underground" to Montreal residents). Beneath the streets of Montreal now lie 20 miles of corridors that cover 41 city blocks. Lining those corridors are over 2,000 shops (ranging from franchises like Foot Locker to more upscale boutiques) and restaurants, and 40 movie theaters -essentially one giant shopping mall. More importantly, the Underground connects dozens of the street-level buildings to each other, including 80% of office space and 35% of commercial space plus two train stations, a bus terminal, the Bell Centre hockey arena, and even a few of the apartment buildings in downtown Montreal. Theoretically, one could live, work, eat, play, commute, and shop without ever setting foot outdoors.

The Underground actually comprises roughly five segments. The largest and busiest of these is also the one to which the Sheraton City Centre - the hotel that hosts the ICA Conference - is the closest; the hotel itself is not connected but there is an entryway three blocks away at Place Ville Marie. This central segment of the Underground is linked to two Metro stations on the Green Line (Peel and McGill) and two on the Orange Line (Bonaventure and Lucien-L'Allier). It is also the link between many of the most elegant and popular shopping venues in Montreal, including La Baie, Les Promenades de la Cathedrale, Place Montreal Trust, Les Ailes de la Mode, Cours Mont-Royal, and Place Bonaventure.

The south side of this segment, at the Bonaventure Metro station, is adjacent to the Victoria Square segment, which is below Montreal's Quartier International district. The Quartier International is a recently redeveloped area that hosts both beautified public spaces and an extension of the central Business district; the World Trade Centre de Montreal, for example, is located here. This segment of the Underground is therefore used mostly by businesspeople, although it is unique in that the commercial space within the corridors is focused on artistic and cultural displays rather than retail.

To see Montreal's actual artistic and cultural center, however, one would go further east, to the segment that connects the Place des Arts (Montreal's massive performing arts complex) with the attractions of Old Montreal. Between those two hubs, the Underground segment also provides access to such sites as the Complexe Desjardins (a huge hotel and shopping complex), Musee d'Arts Contemporain (The Museum of Contemporary Art), the Palais des Congres de Montreal (Montreal Convention Center), and the Avenue du President-Kennedy.

While these three segments of the Underground are all connected to some extent by pedestrian walkways and tunnels, the other two segments are more like satellites: they are connected to the core of the Underground by Metro only. Both the Orange and Green Lines intersect at the Berri-UQAM station, which is the nucleus of the easternmost satellite segment. Most of the surface-level access points in this segment are buildings on the campus of Universite du Quebec a Montreal, although there are also exits to the surrounding Quartier Latin-Montreal's theater and nightlife district-the Place Dupuis shopping and office complex; and the new Grande Bibliotheque du Quebec, the archives of the Province of Quebec.

The final, smallest, and westernmost segment of the Underground is centered around the Guy-Concordia and Atwater stations on the Green Line. Again, much of this segment accesses campus buildings-those of Concordia University in this case-but also the residential and shopping complexes of Place Alexis Nihon and the prestigious Westmount Square.

With so many different areas, navigating the Underground sounds much more complicated than it actually is. At every entrance and along the walls of the walkways are posted map of the entire network of corridors, tunnels, and Metro stations, including "You Are Here" pointers. This is important to note, as the Underground is a must-see for anyone who visits Montreal - and, if the weather is particularly hot or there's heavy rain, surprisingly useful for getting around the city.