The Chateau Frontenac is known as the Castle, and it is the most emblematic building of Quebec. Also, it is actually a hotel (the most photographed in the world!) The first foundations were built in 1892-1893 by the Canadian Pacific railway company, under the eye of the architect Bruce Price. The urban monument was built in the provincial capital in an attempt to attract luxury tourism, an industry whose golden age was in full swing. Built where the  Château St-Louis and Chateau Haldimand once stood, the hotel is also a tribute to the glorious history of the governors of Quebec. In fact, the name of the building honors the most illustrious of those governors, Louis de Buade Frontenac. There are many events and personalities that confirmed the hotel's special touch, including the Quebec Conference of 1943, when Roosevelt and Churchill discussed the strategy of the Allied Forces in World War II. Yet with all this history, it is only since 1926 that one can admire the tower structure, which lends the Chateau Frontenac its most distinctive feature. 

Museum of French America

It was 1806 when the Quebec Seminary, in an effort to educate their countrymen, took the initiative to show their collection of objects dedicated to the understanding of the natural world. Featuring coins, medals, geological specimens, and zoological and botanical gardens, the Museum of the Seminar would quickly attract both the intellectuals and the curious of the time. In fact, in 1838 the authorities of the Seminary hired Thomas Baillargé to create a building specifically designed to store their scientific collections for the viewing public. Even today, the house with the curved front, which was erected for the occasion, stands in the heart of the city as the oldest museum in Canada. Over the decades, the number of objects contained within has grown to exceed 100,000 and its mission has surpassed the world of natural science to embrace the cultural and social history of Quebec. However, it has only been since 1991 that the place is called the Museum of French America.

Thibaudeau Warehouse

Politician, co-founder of the National Bank but above all, probably the richest businessmen in Quebec in the nineteenth century, Isidore Thibaudeau made his fortune in the import of American and European novelties (mainly textiles). After its founding in 1856, his company dominated its competitors in the early1860s. This prosperity thus explains the warehouse with his name, which was built in 1880 and was acquired by the company Thibaudeau Brothers & Co. to store their goods. Thibaudeau's death in 1893 did not stop the successful business of the company, judging by the expansion of the warehouse a year later. It was not until 1960 that this edifice to the glory of trade was abandoned by its owners. Since 1986, the building contains apartments and offices.

Protestant House - Kirk Hall

This religious building was erected in 1829 to serve the oldest Anglo-Scottish community of Canada. After serving the city of Quebec in the aftermath of the English conquest in 1759, the congregation of St. Andrew received a territory in 1802 by the Crown of England to develop the Protestant community. Among the structures built for this purpose, Kirk Hall became an educational organization, and was eventually the oldest Protestant school in the country. This educational mission lasted until 1885. After that, Kirk Hall was a Minesterial residence and eventually became, from 1909, a community hall and a place of accommodation for the Protestants. Kirk Hall still retains these functions today.

Capitol Theater

This lavish theater, built in 1903 according to plans by the American architect Walter S. Painter, is the pride of the citizens of Quebec. His style was both tasteful and powerful - he borrowed from both the Fine Arts and Second Empire architectural movements that prevailed in the days when it was built, but also evoked the French roots of the city with a facade reminiscent of the influences of Louis XIV. The Capitol was long called "The Auditotirum of Quebec" for its versatile use, operas, concerts, galas, silent film and eventually modern film. The Capitol Theater was the location for any representation of cultural importance that was held in the city, events that included names like Yves Montand, Maurice Chevalier and even Alfred Hitchcock, who presented the premiere of his film ‘’I Confess’’ in which Québec served as backdrop for the plot. Suffering a decline in business from 1970, the Capitol was abandoned in 1982. Happily, its classification as a historic monument by UNESCO in 1986 gave the historic building a second life, and it reopened in 1992.

Hotel de Ville

Although the administration of Quebec elected its first mayor in 1833, it took more than 60 years before the city council could stay in a permanent building that was identified for its function. The Hotel de Ville was thus inaugurated in September of 1896, a building that blended the neoclassical architectural style with the contrasting neoromantic, all mixed up with the Second Empire-style buildings in the city. The architect  George-Émile Tanguay wanted to evoke an image recalling the distant past of Quebec in a building that functioned as was proper, as shown by the clock tower that was so typical for urban office buildings.  The Hotel de Ville de Québec was expanded in 1929 and renovated between 2003 and 2008, just in time to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city.

Louis St. Laurent Building

Since its construction in 1871, the post office in Quebec has become historic for being one of the few buildings remaining from a group that was once built to create the first international postal network in Canada. Designed in the shape of an “L” on three floors by architect Pierre Gauvreau, this building has a Beaux-Arts style largely due to renovations and additions made in 1913 and 1919. Beginning in 1984, the building took the name of Louis St-Laurent to honor the former Prime Minister of Canada (in power from 1949 to 1958), who had taken up residence in Quebec City. To this day it still houses a post office as well as offices and the library of the Park Service of Environment Canada.

Customs building

With its Doric columns recalling the legacy of the ancient government buildings and the head of a bearded man carved on the facade to symbolize Neptune and its seas carrying merchant ships, the building of the customs of Quebec is a major source of State revenues in the city, and has been since its construction in 1856. Burned in 1864 and again in 1909, the building still remained to be reborn from the ashes with some renovations, thus perpetuating the pride of the people of Quebec and the imposing character and aesthetic sense of the city. It came as no surprise when in 1972 the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada named the building as a place of historical importance.

Parliament Building of Quebec

The emblem of power and the seat of the government of Quebec was erected between 1877 and 1886 by the architect Eugène-Étienne Taché. The signature of the supervisor is seen also in the maxim that he offered to Quebecers and which he decided to sign over the main entrance: "I remember." The building is also representative of the culture and history of its subjects. On the one hand it sports the dual French-speaking, with lilies carved on the arms of the front, and on the other hand, the letters "VR" also engraved as a reminder of allegiance to the Queen Victoria. Historically, Parliament Hall delivers a mosaic of characters that have marked the history of the nation. Among the perched statues, we can see Wolfe, Montcalm, Joliet, Champlain, Frontenac and Talon. Since 1985, the building has become independent of any municipal governance and a national historic site.

Chapel of Jesuits

Founded in 1540 by Ignatius Loyola, the Society of Jesus is a religious order whose purpose was the furtherance of the Catholic religion and the conversion of the less-civilized inhabitants of the globe. In this sense, its member missionaries were often the first people to inhabit the regions discovered by European explorers, facing hardship and even death. Soon after their founding, New France was one of those destinations to which the Jesuits were dispatched. Unfortunately for the Society, the conquest of 1759 curbed the activities of piety and education of the Order, and the last Jesuit in Quebec died in 1800. It was not until 1842 that a Catholic British rule was permissive and tolerant of the Catholic order. While the Jesuits were functionally absent during those 42 years, a chapel was still erected from 1817 to 1820 as a place of worship by a group of faithful Catholic laymen, called the Congregation of Notre Dame. The new Jesuit Order would take over the place starting in 1849. Since 1992, the Chapel of Jesuits has been a refuge for homeless youths in Quebec.

Archdiocese of Québec

Long designated as the administrative center of the archdiocese, now used primarily to host the pope visit (John Paul II in 1984), the residence of the Bishop of Quebec is the second and final of the kind in the city since 1847 (the first having been the Bishop's Palace which was the basis to become the Parliament). Built according to plans made by Thomas Baillargé, the famous architect conferred to the sacred place an image of prestige. The limestone dark-gray stones of the building reinforce the solemn image and neoclassical style reinforced by Doric columns flanking the entrance portal. Similarly, the building was expanded with a new facade in 1903 in a continuation of the original style, with arched windows, a balcony, and a portico adorned with an entablature supported by six columns of gray granite.

Leaders

Bishop Elzear-Alexandre Taschereau
A man of piety, devotion and a passion for the transmission of knowledge, Elzear Alexandre Taschereau quickly climbed the ranks of the priesthood. He was especially noted for his meetings with the new Irish immigrants in quarantine in 1847. Risking his life, the priest gave the afflicted Irish assistance despite the typhus that he would eventually contract from them. Treated for the disease, he was among those who helped in the founding of Laval University, and became president of the school in 1860. But he is best remembered for the year 1886, when he ascended from being the Archbishop of Quebec and was crowned the first cardinal in the history of Canada.

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau
Chaveau was above all else a man of letters. The writings he published earned him the respect of his fellow citizens for his artful prose and the stories he told through his poems and novels. But Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau was also a keen analyst, aware that to live well, he must unite his passion for words with his skill at politics. Thus, the writer also became a deputy. And after twenty years of victories and the creation of the best education system in Quebec, he managed to become the first provincial Prime Minister in history when Canada was officially formed in 1867 . But for all his success, he was unwilling to retire when his term ended. Motivated to improve Quebec society, Chauveau obtained the positions of President of the Senate, Chief of Police in Montreal and Senior of the Faculty of Law of Laval University. Only after he completed these considerable duties could he die in peace in his hometown of Quebec.

Gabriel-Alphonse Desjardins
In Quebec, the name Desjadrins is so well known that he is probably the most notorious economic figure in provincial history. Even today, his legacy continues to shape the economy of Quebec. Gabriel-Alphonse Desjardins established the first public savings bank in Quebec in 1900. Having studied business, Desjardins still waited several years before starting his great project; years he spent gaining an awareness of the economic cause of francophones in Quebec, and also as a military journalist in Quebec City. Inspired by the work of economists such as Henry W. Wolfe and his book People's Banks, Desjardins' Mouvement des caisses populaires would take shape in 1901. Until his death in 1920, Desjardins saw his network grow to over 150 locations across Quebec and nearly a dozen in the United States. One hundred years after its founding, Desjardins Group is now the 6th largest global financial group with over 1300 points of service across the North American continent.

François-Xavier Garneau
It would not be exaggeration to say that François-Xavier Garneau was for Quebec what Homer was to the ancient Greeks or Virgil to the Romans. Unlike the authors of these founding myths of nations, however, Garneau wanted to conscientiously be the flagship for the cultural development of Quebec's people - and he performed brilliantly at the task. With an interest in natural history and a career as a notary in Quebec City, Garneau also traveled to Europe and worked in England. Yet it was not until he returned to his homeland that his greatest achievements would be realized. When the Governor of Canada, Lord Durham, said that the Frenchmen in Quebec were a people without culture or history, Garneau's reaction was swift. In 1845 he published his History of Canada, an unavoidably major work that would make Garneau the most influential Canadian historian of the nineteenth century and a pioneer, an icon that would inspire proponents of Quebec in the centuries to come.

Lord Dufferin
Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the Marquis of Dufferin, was the third Governor General of Canada. It is curious that this citizen of Britain was born in Florence, Italy and yet secured Quebec's status as the oldest fortified city in North America. A skilled diplomat, Lord Dufferin wanted to defend the city he found so irresistible, and argued against the municipal officials of the time as they attempted to tear down the wall of Quebec in order to facilitate its growth. Not only was he successful, but he proved his devotion by making the Citadel the second vice-royal residence in Canada, a tradition that persisted for more than a century. To honor his devotion, the citizens of Quebec changed the name of the gazebo overlooking the old part of the city, and the Terrace Durham became the Dufferin Terrace in 1879. Moreover, the terrace has been enlarged and embellished in the years since following the plans of Lord Dufferin himself.

Massive British immigration (1800-1830)
Quebec, named for an Algonquin word meaning 'where the river narrows,' was designed to show the relevance of its name, and no era shows that relevance as well as the early nineteenth century. Already a port city as well as host for travelers to the Atlantic, from 1800 to 1830 Quebec saw its most dramatic historical change in population density. While under the control of the British Empire, the city was a likely destination for English-speaking immigrants looking for a better life. But two hundred years ago, the most likely immigrants were the Irish, thanks to the famine and disease ravaging their homeland. They came by the thousands in a surprisingly short time – more than 10,000 in 1820 and more than 20,000 in 1822. Another wave, bigger than either of the first two combined, arrived in 1831. Consequently, nearly a quarter of the urban population of Quebec was suddenly speaking English in the space of just half a century. It was during this massive influx of new citizenry that Quebec truly began to take on the appearance of a provincial capital and ever-growing cosmopolitan center.

War of 1812 against the United States
With Napoleon continually baiting and battling the British, it was only a matter of time before the war came to North America. So it was that with the support of Napoleonic France in 1812, the United States tried once more to invade Quebec, as they had in 1775. But while they reached the gates of Quebec with their first attempt, the American troops knew that this time, the Canadian resistance would allow them to march further than Montreal. Despite their concerns with Napoleon, however, the British were still quite determined not to lose their North American colonies. They developed in Canadians a strong sense of patriotism toward the Crown of England, and attracted hundreds of men to increase their armies and successfully defend their country, sometimes even in battles where the American forces outnumbered them as much as three to one.

Quebec becomes the provincial capital (1867)

During the mid-nineteenth century, North America was leading the way to the modern world. While the United States was experiencing deep rifts as citizens struggled to redefine themselves, their northern neighbors were uniting as a group to strengthen economic and geopolitical ties. Thus, in 1867, the modern country of Canada was founded, under the Act of British North American that would give full independence to the territory in terms of internal policies. Now, other world nations would have to negotiate no longer with a colony of Britain, but with a unified and independent nation. Quebec was naturally chosen as the capital of the province, and after 1867 would become even more important as the headquarters of the new government in the province of Quebec.

Commission of the channels of Canada and Quebec Port economic decline (1871)

While the first half of the nineteenth century would make Quebec the hub of a booming national economy, the second half of the century was a different story entirely. The modernization of urban industry would greatly benefit Montreal, a city which had thus far seemed inconsequential to the prosperity of Quebec. The geographical position of Montreal would eventually lead to the use of water power, the construction of railways and the Victoria Bridge. Industrialization increased to the point where in 1881, Montreal produced half the the products manufactured in Quebec. But when the Channels Commission of Canada was undertaken in 1871, the entire port economy on which Quebec relied changed course. The consequences of the Commission ensured the improving quality of an existing network of canals between Montreal and the Great Lakes. Maritime trade then developed beyond Quebec and directly to the most industrialized cities, and eventually to the cities located even further inside North America.