• Canada Guide

  • Introduction to Canada
  • Weather
  • Things not to miss
  • Getting around
  • Entry requirements
  • Money
  • Public holidays

• Explore Canada

  • Ontario
  • Southwest Québec
  • Québec City
  • Northern Québec
  • The Maritime Provinces
  • Newfoundland and Labrador
  • Manitoba and Saskatchewan
  • Alberta and the Rockies
  • Vancouver Island
  • Southern British Columbia
  • The North

• Cities

  • Calgary
    
  • Edmonton
    
  • Fredericton
    
  • Halifax
    
  • Kelowna
    
  • Kingston
    
  • Montréal
    
  • Nanaimo
    
  • Ottawa
    
  • Québec City
    
  • Regina
    
  • Rimouski
    
  • Saint John
    
  • Saskatoon
    
  • Sault Ste Marie
    
  • St John's
    
  • Thunder Bay
    
  • Toronto
    
  • Vancouver
    
  • Victoria
    
  • Winnipeg
    

Canada Guide

Québec City

• Accommodation
• Eating
• Nightlife and entertainment

Spread over Cap Diamant and the banks of the St Lawrence, QUÉBEC CITY (sometimes referred to just as "Québec") is Canada's most beautifully located and most historic city. Vieux-Québec, surrounded by solid fortifications, is the only walled city in North America, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In both parts of the Old City – Haute and Basse-Ville (Upper and Lower Town) – the winding cobbled streets are flanked by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stone houses and churches, graceful parks and squares, and countless monuments. Although some districts have been painstakingly restored to give tourists as seductive an introduction to Québec as possible, this is nevertheless an authentically and profoundly French-Canadian city: 95 percent of its 600,000 population are French-speaking, and it is often difficult to remember which continent you are in as you tuck in to a croissant and a steaming bowl of café au lait in a Parisian-style café. Moreover, despite the fact that the city's symbol is a hotel, the Château Frontenac, the government remains the main employer, not tourism, and some of the more impressive buildings are government-run and thus off-limits.

Québec City is more than a shade provincial, often seeming too bound up with its religious and military past – a residue of the days when the city was the bastion of the Catholic Church in Canada. On the other hand, the Church can claim much of the credit for the creation and preservation of the finest buildings, from the quaint Église Notre-Dame-des-Victoires to the Basilique-Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Québec and the vast Séminaire. In contrast, the austere defensive structures, dominated by the massive Citadelle, reveal the military pedigree of a city dubbed by Churchill as the "Gibraltar of North America", while the battlefield of the Plains of Abraham is now a national historic park. Of the city's rash of museums, two are essential visits: the modern Musée de la Civilisation, in Basse-Ville, expertly presenting all aspects of French-Canadian society, and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, in Haute-Ville, west of the walls, which has the finest art collection in the province.