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The Quartier Latin is an area in the Ville-Marie borough of Montreal, surrounding UQAM and lower Saint-Denis Street, between downtown and the Village gai. It is known for its theatres, artistic atmosphere, cafés, and boutiques.

It owes its name, a reference to the Quartier Latin in Paris, to the presence of the nascent Université de Montréal in the 1920s. In the 1940s the university moved out and headed for a new campus on the north slopes of Mount Royal, far from the downtown borough. In the late 1960s UQAM was born and established itself in the Ville-Marie borough, giving a modern underpinning to the name. A large junior college, the CEGEP du Vieux-Montreal also moved in at about the same period.

The Grande Bibliothèque du Québec joined these educational institutions in 2005.