Ottawa was a rough timber town called Bytown before Queen Victoria made it a capital in 1857. Three days trace that arc: the Rideau Canal's military engineering, Confederation-era stone, war museums and a Cold War bunker under a farm field.
Douglas Cardinal's curved 1989 building in Gatineau holds the world's largest indoor collection of totem poles in the Grand Hall, plus 15,000 years of Indigenous history in the First Peoples Hall. Open 09:30–17:00, Thursdays to 19:00.
Ottawa's oldest stone building (1827) sits in the Rideau Canal locks and served as Colonel By's supply depot and treasury during canal construction. Three floors cover the Irish and French-Canadian labourers and the malaria that killed roughly 1,000 of them.
The bluff above the Ottawa River marks where Champlain passed in 1613 with an astrolabe, mapping the Kichi Sibi route used by Algonquin nations for millennia. The Anishinabe Scout figure was moved to Major's Hill Park in 1999 after protest.
Ottawa's oldest surviving church, begun 1841 in a neoclassical style and finished with Gothic Revival twin spires by 1866. The interior holds hand-carved mahogany figures by Philippe Parizeau and a vaulted ceiling painted deep blue with gilt stars.
Moriyama's 2005 bunker-like building covers conflicts from the 1600s to Afghanistan. Highlights include Hitler's armoured Mercedes-Benz 770K, Vimy Ridge trench reconstructions and the Memorial Hall, where sun hits the Unknown Soldier's headstone at 11:00 on 11 November.
The 1939 granite arch at Confederation Square, unveiled by George VI, shows 22 bronze figures passing through to represent the 1914–18 response. The Tomb was added in 2000 with remains from a Vimy Ridge grave.
The 1878 Sandy Hill mansion where Wilfrid Laurier and later Mackenzie King both lived as prime ministers. King's third-floor study still holds the crystal ball and his mother's portrait, before which he held séances. Open Thursday–Sunday in summer.
Unveiled 1992 on Sussex Drive, three bronze figures stand on converging concrete ridges honouring Lester Pearson's 1956 Suez proposal, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize and defined Canada's postwar role.
A four-storey bunker buried under a Carp farm field, built 1959–61 for 535 officials to survive a nuclear strike. The blast tunnel, decontamination showers, CBC emergency studio and Bank of Canada gold vault are intact. 30 km west of downtown.
Ottawa's first fashionable suburb, laid out in the 1860s for MPs and lumber barons, keeps blocks of Queen Anne and Second Empire brick homes on Daly and Wilbrod. Embassies now occupy many; 24 Sussex's predecessor era is visible in the scale.
Operating 1862–1972 and considered one of North America's harshest prisons, the Nicholas Street building kept 2.4 m cells and a gallows. Patrick Whelan, hanged here in 1869 for the assassination of D'Arcy McGee, drew a crowd of 5,000.
The falls the Algonquin called Akikodjiwan were a tobacco-offering site, then the engine of Philemon Wright's 1800s timber empire and E.B. Eddy's mills. The 1908 ring dam reopened to the public in 2017 after a century behind fences.