Québec was founded in 1608 and its layers are still readable in stone: the seminary Bishop Laval built in 1663, the hospital nuns of 1639, the crypt of New France's governors, the British garrison gaol, and Wendake.
Founded in 1663 by Bishop François de Laval, the seminary holds New France's oldest collections: silverware, 17th-century books, and the chapel where Laval's relics were placed in 2014. Open 10:00–17:00.
Built in 1688 on the foundations of Champlain's 1608 Habitation, this stone church was renamed after French victories over English fleets in 1690 and 1711. A votive model of the ship Brézé hangs in the nave.
The oldest parish north of colonial Mexico, founded 1647 and rebuilt three times after fire and the 1759 British bombardment. Its crypt holds four governors of New France and Bishop Laval's tomb.
Augustinian sisters landed in 1639 and founded the Hôtel-Dieu, the first hospital north of Mexico. The 1695 vaulted cellars sheltered the nuns during sieges; the museum displays some 40,000 medical objects.
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The star-shaped fortress was built by the British between 1820 and 1850 against a feared American invasion, incorporating the French Cap-Diamant redoubt of 1693. Still an active army base.
Completed in 1886 in Second Empire style by Eugène-Étienne Taché, the parliament carries 26 bronze figures on its façade — Frontenac, Wolfe, Montcalm and Wendat chief Kondiaronk — a deliberate stone summary of the province.
Opened in 1808 as the city gaol, converted to Morrin College in 1868, now home to the Literary and Historical Society of Canada, founded 1824. Visitors walk into the original cell blocks and a Victorian English library.
This terrace held the bishop's palace and, from 1859 to 1866, the parliament of United Canada where Confederation was debated before fire destroyed it. Statues of Louis Hébert and George-Étienne Cartier face the Saint-Charles valley.
Driven from Georgian Bay by Iroquois war in 1650, the Huron-Wendat settled here in 1697. The reconstructed longhouse village and the adjoining museum cover the 1760 Murray Treaty, still legally recognised today.
The falls were the front line in July 1759: Wolfe camped on the east bank and his assault was thrown back on 31 July, months before the Plains. The manor was the summer residence of the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father.
Merchant Jean-Baptiste Chevalier built this stone house in 1752; British shelling in 1759 gutted the lower town, and the rebuilt vaults survive underneath. The Casse-Cou staircase beside it has linked upper and lower town since 1635.
Protestant burials ran here from 1771 to 1860: garrison soldiers, Irish immigrants and victims of the 1832 cholera epidemic. The neo-Gothic church beside the gravestones now serves as a public library open to visitors.