Place Royale

This guide to Place Royale in Quebec City opens with a challenge: touch these grey stone walls, and you'd guess centuries of history, though not all of it is as old as it looks. It traces the square through an 1682 fire that destroyed roughly sixty wooden houses and forced a strict new law demanding stone construction with tall firewalls between homes, then through the British bombardment of September 1759 that flattened the square ahead of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The church beside you, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, took thirty-six years to first build. Look closely at the stonework as you cross the square.