Midtown Yonge Street Murals

Neighbourhood: Midtown · Address: Yonge St at Eglinton Ave, Toronto, ON · Hours: Open 24 hours · Price Range: Free · Editorial status: Not yet verified

Why Visit

Where else in Toronto do you get a changing outdoor gallery with over 20 murals from both emerging and established artists, all along one major street? Braving Midtown during the LRT mess actually pays off if you're into art, photography, or just want to see how construction walls became surprise canvases.

What Makes It Unique

Unlike the alleyway murals downtown, these are right on Yonge — massive, intentionally curated, and often responding to the chaos and mood of the neighbourhood. You’ll spot everything from abstract colour fields to hyper-detailed portraits, and new ones cycle in as the construction hoardings move. The sheer density of pieces over just a few blocks is unusual for Toronto.

If you want to see a side of downtown Toronto that feels a little raw, a little theatrical, and unexpectedly thoughtful, go to Sankofa Square (formerly Sankofa Square) after dark and look up. Most people clock it as our version of Times Square, which is fair on first glance: giant LED screens, nonstop motion, chains, crowds, traffic, buskers, sirens, all of it. But what makes this place worth returning to isn't the advertising. It's the fact that mixed into those huge commercial billboards is actual public art. The square’s digital art program, YoungDundas ART, commissions local artists to show work on more than 30 screens around the intersection throughout the year. That means you can be standing in the middle of one of the busiest corners in the country, surrounded by all the usual downtown noise, and suddenly a massive 10-metre screen starts showing something quiet, intimate, weird, or personal. A close-up face. Slow-moving abstract colour. A digital piece made by someone who actually lives here, scaled up to a size that almost fights with the city around it. That contrast is the whole point, and it’s what makes the square more interesting than people expect. It’s best after dark, no question. In daylight, the area can feel harsh and overly commercial. At night, the screens take over and the whole place becomes its own light source. Reflections bounce off glass towers, streetcar windows, wet pavement if it’s rained. If you’re into night photography, this is one of the easiest places in the city to get dramatic shots without trying too hard. You’ll catch layered signage, silhouettes, the Eaton Centre crowd spilling out, and these flashes of digital art appearing where you’d normally expect ads for phones or sneakers. What actually happens there depends on the night. Sometimes it’s full chaos: tourists taking selfies, teens hanging around the steps, someone performing with a speaker, people rushing to the subway at Dundas Station. Other times, especially later in the evening on a weekday, you can stand still for a minute and really watch the screens change. The art doesn’t shut the city off; it works because the city keeps moving underneath it. A couple practical things. It’s free, open 24 hours, and easy to reach since it’s right at 1 Dundas Street East, directly above Dundas subway station. If you’re going specifically for the art, don’t just plant yourself in the middle of the square and call it done. Walk the perimeter and look up at different angles, because the works appear across multiple buildings and screens. Give yourself at least 20 or 30 minutes. More if you like photographing cities at night. If you happen to be in Toronto on New Year’s Eve, go. Seriously. The artistic projections on the surrounding buildings can get huge, and the scale is kind of absurd in the best way. Even if the square isn’t usually your scene, that’s when it feels less like an ad district and more like the city briefly turned itself into a canvas.