Quebec City Audio Tours

Quebec City sits on a limestone promontory above the St. Lawrence River, and the combination of the cliff, the river, and the 17th-century fortifications that still stand intact make it look more like a European city than anything else on the continent. The Chateau Frontenac, a copper-roofed chateau-style hotel that opened in 1893, dominates the skyline from every angle and has become so embedded in the city's identity that photographs of Quebec City without it feel incomplete. The Plains of Abraham on the city's edge is the site of the 1759 battle that decided the fate of North America, where British forces under General Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm in a twenty-minute engagement that changed Canadian history permanently.

Old Quebec, the walled upper town and lower town connected by the steep and photogenic Breakneck Stairs, is entirely UNESCO-listed and extremely well-preserved.

Rue Saint-Jean in the upper town is the main commercial street, a dense block of restaurants, bakeries, and boutiques. The lower town around Place Royale, where Samuel de Champlain founded New France in 1608, is quieter and more atmospheric, especially in the early morning before tour groups arrive. Quebec City is most famous in winter when the Carnival fills the streets with outdoor events, snow sculptures, and ice slides, and when the residents demonstrate that cold weather is a state of mind.