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Few cities in North America carry their history as visibly as Quebec City. The fortified walls that encircle the upper town are not a reconstruction or a heritage project but the genuine article, the only remaining walled city north of Mexico, and they lend the place a density of atmosphere that newer cities simply cannot manufacture. Founded by Samuel de Champlain in 1608 on a promontory above the St Lawrence River, Quebec City grew into the administrative and military capital of New France, and that colonial inheritance is legible in every stone facade along the Rue Saint-Louis and every cannon pointed seaward from the Citadelle.

The city divides naturally between Haute-Ville and Basse-Ville, connected by the steep funicular that drops from the Dufferin Terrace to the Quartier Petit-Champlain below. Haute-Ville holds the grand civic architecture: the Chateau Frontenac rising above the cliff like something from a fairy tale, the Plains of Abraham where the fate of New France was decided in a single September morning in 1759, and the Citadelle itself, still an active garrison of the Royal 22nd Regiment. Basse-Ville is older in spirit if not always in fabric, its narrow lanes and stone warehouses recalling the fur-trade economy that once made this port one of the most consequential in the Atlantic world.