Picture this! Calgary’s best Instagram spots

Bow Passage Overlook Rotary Park Peace Bridge

PICTURE THIS!

CALGARY’S BEST INSTAGRAM SPOTS

Coming up with a list of the best places for Instagram selfies in Calgary will likely test the limits of your cellphone’s capacity. There are more wonderful places in the city where you can get the desired Instagram double tap than you can shake a memory stick at. Here are some of what we can recommend, some are no-brainers and are instantly recognizable, others less so and might hold a few surprises for those new to the city – which most of our readers are!

1. PEACE BRIDGE

Instantly recognizable and iconic, the Peace Bridge is likely the most photographed spot in the city. It’s been an exceedingly popular backdrop for graduation, prom and even wedding pics since it opened in 2012. The cylindrical red-and-white bridge was designed by famous Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, and connects the southern Bow River pathway and Downtown Calgary with the northern Bow River pathway and the community of Sunnyside.

by PEPPER RODRIGUEZ

Calgary Central Public Library

High Park

2. CALGARY CENTRAL LIBRARY

The five-level 240,000 square-foot library designed by international architecture firm Snøhetta, and Calgary’s DIALOG educates as it entertains. Take a picture along the crystalline geometry of the façade that references Chinook cloud arches, or inside where the architects say the form might be seen as “resembling an open book, snowflake-like linework, or interlocking houses, anchoring the ideas of the collective and community.”

3. ROTARY PARK

For my money, it’s the best spot to take a cityscape shot of Downtown Calgary.

Rotary Park is on the hill north of Memorial Drive and east of Centre Street in the northeast. At the south end of Rotary Park is a beautiful vantage point called Jim Fish Ridge. Named for Jim Fish, a long-time parks visionary and supporter. One of the original Centre Street Bridge Lions is there too on a bluff overlooking the said bridge.

4. THE BOW PASSAGE OVERLOOK

Located in the Pearce Estate Park, next to the popular kayaking spot of the Bow River’s Harvie Passage, the Bow Passage Overlook might be the most overlooked Instagram spot in the city. A wonder, as it can be easily seen driving down Deerfoot Trail. Designed to create “a physical and conceptual link between the city, the environment and the river” it also connects as a place for pretty pictures.

5. HIGH PARK

It opened in the middle of the pandemic in October 2020 to give Calgary’s Beltline residents a chance to enjoy the outdoors again, and today it has become one of the most popular photoshoot places in the city. The park reimagines the under-utilized 90,000 square-feet rooftop of the Centre City Parkade located at 340 10 Ave SW and provides much needed additional public space in the community.