The Royal Ontario Museum owes its existence, in a roundabout way, to a farm boy from Exeter, Ontario, who spent his childhood pestering the local blacksmith and tanner about how things were made. Charles Trick Currelly grew up to become something like Canada's answer to Indiana Jones, and in 1914 his enthusiasm helped open the museum's doors, facade unveiled by the Duke of Connaught himself.

Nineteen years later a matching west wing appeared, and in 2007 the museum did something more startling: it bolted on Daniel Libeskind's Crystal, a jagged glass intrusion that still divides Torontonians who preferred their landmarks to look like landmarks.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours of Yorkville use the ROM as a landmark along Bloor Street's transformation from Victorian village into glossy cultural district, tracing how a museum built for dinosaur bones and Egyptian mummies became, a century later, one more unexpected shape on a well-heeled skyline.