Historic District of Old Québec

Québec

Date of Inscription: 1985

Close to half the buildings in the Historic District of Old Québec were built before 1850. Although the city itself has grown into a modern metropolis of some 600,000 people, the historic district, covering 135 hectares (about five percent of the city total) remains among the most coherent such areas in North America. Moreover, Québec is unique among cities on the continent in having retained almost all its fortifications, and la vieille capitale may claim for itself the honour of being the only walled city in North America.

Justification of outstanding universal value

The Historic District of Old Québec was designated as a World Heritage site by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee under the following criteria:

Criterion (iv): A coherent and well preserved urban ensemble, the Historic District of Old Québec is an exceptional example of a fortified colonial town and by far the most complete north of Mexico.

Criterion (vi): Québec, the former capital of New France, illustrates one of the major stages in the European settlement of the cololonization of the Americas by Europeans.

Full description

Champlain built his original habitation on the shore of the St. Lawrence River, near the site of the former Iroquois village of Stadacona, at the foot of a great promontory called Cap Diamant. Settlement grew first along the river, and later, following the lead of military and religious institutions, on the promontory itself. The river bank, or Lower Town, remained residential and commercial, and Upper Town became the seat of administration and religion.

In the 1820s, when Québec was Canada’s leading seaport, the British army built a substantial citadel atop Cap Diamant and improved the wall around Upper Town. In the 1870s, Governor General Lord Dufferin, in an early example of urban heritage conservation, persuaded the city not to demolish the fortifications, by then strategically useless, thus defining the historic character - and tourist potential - of Old Québec.