Little Italy Toronto

Your Typical Neighbour

In Little Italy, you’ll find that traditional Italian, Portuguese, Latino or Vietnamese residents mingle with a newer generation of hipsters renting subdivided Victorians, young families who got in before prices went crazy, and well-heeled professionals buying reno’d character homes or renovating for themselves. Euro hipsters who love espresso and soccer. Next-gen Mafioso whose parents have moved to Woodbridge.

What We Love

Home to some of the city’s best food & drink options (hello Bar Raval and Cafe Diplomaticol!). Little Italy is an ever-changing collection of top-notch restaurants (serving more than pizza and pasta), sidewalk cafes, live music and Latin dancing opportunities that require no transit or cab fare. Side streets remain quiet and leafy even when College Street is at its hopping busiest. Portuguese and Italian communities lend a strong flair to the cultural life, with streets closed regularly for processions, festivals and the requisite football World Cup/European Cup madness.

What We Don’t Love

Congestion and a lack of parking. Walking down College Street on a late Saturday night in August can be so busy you may feel like you haven’t made it out the bar’s front door yet. Finding parking and/or making your way home can be slow when streetcars are running both directions with only one lane available.

The Real Estate Scoop

Little Italy is composed largely of Victorian-inspired semi-detached and row homes, nestled under mature trees on narrow streets. Garages are located most commonly at the rear off of laneways that run parallel between the house-lined streets.

A number of sprawling homes on streets like Palmerston and Dovercourt drive up the average price point on homes for this area. Drive north from College along Palmerston (technically South Annex) to see some of the area’s fancier bits; for a more “typical” streetscape of narrow Victorian semis, try Crawford between Dundas and College. Lack of inventory is having an upward effect on the pricing here in general, as popularity remains steady and availability remains low. Attractively priced not-so-updated homes in the area can still be found at a ‘reasonable’ price, but increasingly these too end up being purchased in a hail of bidding-war bullets.

Long-lingering popularity for the area has led to the erection of a number of new low-to mid-rise condo & loft projects that have made Little Ital-living more attainable for the masses who want to be close to the action; we expect to see more of these along the busy retail-focused stretch of College.

Schools

There are a number of schools serving the Little Italy neighbourhood, and all of the options will offer fine examples of the multiculturalism that is synonymous with living in Toronto.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

Ossington Old Orchard Public School
St. Luke Catholic School
Brock Public School
Montrose Junior Public School
Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau Elementary School
Dewson Street Junior Public School

INTERMEDIARY SCHOOLS

St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School
Clinton Street Junior Public School
Pope Francis Catholic School

SENIOR SCHOOLS

Central Toronto Academy
Delta Alternative Senior School
Harbord Collegiate Institute
Cast School
Bloor Collegiate Institute

Transit

Rocket options on College, Bathurst and Dundas. Buses on Ossington and Harbord. Drivers are a short jaunt to Gardiner Lakeshore via nearby Bathurst or Dufferin.