Casa Loma and the midtown landmarks, in one paragraph
Casa Loma (1 Austin Terrace) — Sir Henry Pellatt's 1914 Gothic castle on the Davenport escarpment, the city's most-visited historic house — is reached by Spadina Road north from Bloor through the Annex and up the hill (the Austin Terrace entrance at the castle's front, with a lay-by and the coach-house lot on Walmer Road), and a black car drops at the Austin Terrace gate or in the lot, waits there, and collects for the next stop: Spadina Museum next door (285 Spadina Road, the Austin family's house and gardens), the Baldwin Steps below the castle (the staircase down the escarpment to Davenport), the Tarragon Theatre and the Wychwood Barns (the streetcar barns turned arts centre at St. Clair West and Christie), Wychwood Park and Hillcrest's streets, the Nordheimer Ravine and the Cedarvale walk, and the Davenport escarpment's roads. The castle's evening events, Christmas programme, weddings and film shoots close its gates by schedule, and the Yorkville guide's district is ten minutes south — a visitor adds Casa Loma to a Yorkville morning or a ROM and AGO day.
Casa Loma is the landmark every visitor recognises and few know how to reach: it sits on the escarpment above Davenport Road, at the top of the Baldwin Steps and the end of Spadina Road's climb, with an entrance on a residential street and a coach-house lot that fills on a summer weekend — and it closes, a dozen times a year, for the weddings, the galas, the film shoots and the seasonal programmes that are the castle's business. The landmarks around it — Spadina Museum next door, the Wychwood Barns and Wychwood Park below, the ravines and the escarpment's roads — make a half-day that a chauffeur adds to a Yorkville morning or a museum afternoon. This guide covers the castle's entrance and lot, the approach, Spadina Museum, the Baldwin Steps, the castle's calendar and closures, the weddings and the film shoots, the Christmas programme, the Wychwood Barns and the Tarragon, the neighbourhoods, the ravines, the half-day's sequence, and a worked afternoon.
The castle's entrance and the lot
Casa Loma's public entrance is at the castle's front on Austin Terrace, a short residential street at the top of Spadina Road with a lay-by at the gate that holds three cars, and the coach-house lot is on Walmer Road (the castle's east side, entered from Austin Terrace — the paid lot for the castle's visitors, with the tunnel from the castle's basement to the stables and the garage below it); a black car drops at the Austin Terrace gate and waits in the lot or on Walmer's curb, and collects at the gate. The castle's group entrance and the bus bay are on Austin Terrace's west end, and the group transfers article covers the Sprinter a tour group uses.
The approach
From Yorkville and Bloor: Spadina Road north from Bloor through the Annex (past the Spadina subway station's entrance and the Annex's houses) and up the escarpment's curve to Austin Terrace — ten minutes; the Spadina Road hill is the only road up the escarpment between Bathurst and Avenue Road, and it is steep and, in January, the winter driving article's kind of hill. From the north and St. Clair: Spadina Road south from St. Clair, or Walmer from Austin Terrace's east; from Davenport: the Baldwin Steps are for pedestrians, and a car climbs via Spadina or via Bathurst and St. Clair. The Yorkville guide covers the district at the hill's foot and the midtown guide the Forest Hill streets north of St. Clair.
Spadina Museum
Spadina Museum (285 Spadina Road, next door to the castle's east) — the Austin family's 1866 house, restored to the 1920s, with six acres of gardens — has its own gate on Spadina Road with a small lay-by, and a combined visit (the castle's two hours, the house's one) is the half-day's core; the museum's gardens are the neighbourhood's quietest picnic and the City's Spadina Museum page has its hours (closed Mondays; seasonal).
The Baldwin Steps
The Baldwin Steps — the 110-step staircase down the escarpment from Austin Terrace to Davenport Road at Spadina — are the castle's pedestrian approach from the south and the neighbourhood's exercise, with the view of the city from the top; a visitor who wants to walk down to Davenport and the Dupont shops is collected at Davenport and Spadina's curb, and one who climbs them from Davenport (a chauffeur suggests it for the view) is dropped at the bottom and collected at the castle.
The castle's calendar and closures
Casa Loma opens daily at 9:30 (to 5, last entry 4) and closes to the public for its events: the summer's Thursday-night concerts on the terrace, the fall's Legends of Horror (October's haunted castle, evenings), the winter's Christmas programme (late November to early January, with extended evening hours and the gardens lit), the galas and the corporate events (the event limo page's territory — a gala's guests arrive at the Austin Terrace gate by the castle's event staff's plan), the weddings (below) and the film shoots (below); the castle's events page has the closures and a chauffeur checks it before a visitor's drop, because a Saturday in June may be a wedding's.
Weddings at the castle
Casa Loma hosts a hundred weddings a year — the ceremony in the Conservatory or the gardens, the reception in the Great Hall or the Library — and the wedding venues article covers the castle's day: the couple's car at the Austin Terrace gate at the castle's event staff's time, the guests' shuttles from the downtown hotels up Spadina to the gate in waves (the lay-by holds one Sprinter at a time), the photographs on the terrace and the Baldwin Steps (the wedding day timeline article's ninety minutes), and the departure at midnight down the hill. The wedding limo guide covers the vehicles and the South Asian weddings article the baraat that has processed up Spadina Road more than once.
Film shoots
The castle is the city's most-filmed interior — the X-Men's school, the Tudors' court, a hundred commercials — and a shoot closes the castle for a day or a week with the production's trucks on Austin Terrace and Walmer and the castle's gates shut; the film and TV production article covers the productions' own transport (the cast from the Yorkville hotels to the Austin Terrace gate at 6 a.m.) and a visitor who arrives on a shoot day is told at the gate and taken to Spadina Museum or the Wychwood Barns instead.
The Christmas programme
From late November to early January the castle's Christmas programme — the decorated halls, the lit gardens, the evening hours to 9 or 10, the Christmas market in the courtyard — makes Casa Loma a December evening: a drop at the Austin Terrace gate at 6, the castle until 8, and a dinner in Yorkville or on St. Clair West after; the Christmas Market article puts the castle among December's events and the lot's December weekends fill by 5, so the chauffeur waits on Walmer or Spadina.
The Wychwood Barns and the Tarragon
Below the escarpment and west along St. Clair, the Artscape Wychwood Barns (601 Christie, at St. Clair West) — the 1913 streetcar barns turned arts centre, farmers' market (Saturdays) and event venue — have a Christie Street curb and a lot on the barns' north side; the Tarragon Theatre (30 Bridgman Avenue, off Dupont near Bathurst) has a Bridgman curb and the theatre district article's timing for its curtain; the Hillcrest and Wychwood Park neighbourhoods (Wychwood Park is a private enclave of Arts and Crafts houses around a pond, entered on foot from Davenport or Alcina) are the walk between them. The Bloor West and High Park guide covers the west end beyond Bathurst.
The ravines and the escarpment's roads
The Nordheimer Ravine (from Spadina Road at St. Clair south-west to Boulton Drive and the Cedarvale Ravine) and the Cedarvale walk to Eglinton West are the neighbourhood's green; the escarpment's roads — Davenport along the foot, Poplar Plains and Russell Hill and Spadina up the face, Austin Terrace and Lyndhurst along the top — are the Forest Hill South and Casa Loma neighbourhoods' streets, and the real estate agents article counts the escarpment's houses among its showing days. A car drops a walker at the Nordheimer's Spadina entrance and collects at Cedarvale's Bathurst end.
The half-day's sequence
A visitor's half-day: Yorkville at 9 (the Yorkville guide), Spadina Road up the hill at 10:30, Casa Loma until 12:30, Spadina Museum until 1:30, lunch on St. Clair West or at the Wychwood Barns' Saturday market, and Yorkville or the ROM by 3 — an hourly with the chauffeur in the lot, or two transfers with the castle's lot for the wait; the Toronto visitor guide puts the castle in a visit's second or third day.
A worked afternoon
A couple from Sydney at the Windsor Arms, a Friday in October. 12:30: the Windsor Arms' St. Thomas canopy to Casa Loma via Avenue Road, Davenport and Spadina — the Austin Terrace gate at 12:45 (the chauffeur checked: no wedding, no shoot; Legends of Horror begins at 7). 12:45–2:45: the castle, the tunnel, the towers. 2:50: Spadina Museum's gate next door; until 3:45. 3:50: down the Baldwin Steps on foot to Davenport, collected at Davenport and Spadina. 4:00: the Wychwood Barns' Christie curb for a coffee and the gallery. 5:00: the Windsor Arms. Four and a half hours on the hourly, four stops, one staircase, and the city from the escarpment.
Casa Loma and midtown landmarks quick reference
| Place | Where the car stops |
|---|---|
| Casa Loma | Austin Terrace gate lay-by (3 cars); coach-house lot on Walmer; bus bay at Austin Terrace's west end |
| Spadina Museum | Spadina Road gate lay-by |
| Baldwin Steps | Top: Austin Terrace; bottom: Davenport & Spadina |
| Wychwood Barns | Christie Street curb; north lot |
| Tarragon Theatre | Bridgman Avenue curb |
| Nordheimer / Cedarvale ravines | Spadina at St. Clair (entrance); Bathurst at Cedarvale (exit) |
| Approach from Yorkville | Spadina Road north from Bloor, up the hill: 10 min |
| Closures | Weddings, galas, film shoots, seasonal programmes — check the castle's calendar |
| Christmas programme | Late Nov–early Jan, evenings to 9–10; lot full by 5 — wait on Walmer / Spadina |
| Weddings | Couple's car at the gate; guest shuttles in waves (one Sprinter at a time) |
Booking a Casa Loma visit
The engine takes "Casa Loma" as a transfer's address; the hourly chauffeur page books the half-day; the wedding limo page the castle's wedding day. Check the castle's calendar for closures before a visit.
The Annex between Bloor and the hill
Spadina Road's climb from Bloor to the castle runs through the Annex — the Victorian streets of Lowther, Prince Arthur, Bernard and Madison, the Spadina Road shops, the Bloor Street strip west of Avenue Road with the Bloor Cinema and the Annex's restaurants — and a visitor's half-day often adds an Annex lunch or a Bloor Street browse between the castle and Yorkville; the Yorkville guide covers the district east of Avenue Road and the University of Toronto article the campus south of Bloor that the Annex borders.
Casa Loma for a corporate event or a gala
The castle's Great Hall, Library, Conservatory and gardens host corporate dinners, product launches and charity galas for 100 to 600, and the transport is the event limo page's: the principals' cars at the Austin Terrace gate at the castle's event staff's time, the guests' Sprinters from the hotels in waves (one in the lay-by at a time; the others staged on Walmer or Spadina), and the corporate holiday party article's two-stage departure at midnight down the hill; the conference transportation article's coordinator stands at the gate.
Booking notes for a Casa Loma visit
"Casa Loma, Austin Terrace gate, 12:45; hourly with Spadina Museum and the Wychwood Barns after; two" — the gate, the time and the half-day's shape; for a wedding, the castle's event staff's schedule and the guests' shuttle waves; the how to book online article shows the fields and the chauffeur checks the castle's calendar for the day's closures.
