Séminaire de Québec
Whitewashed stone courtyard where seminary students have played for three centuries, ringed by seventeenth-century wings.
This guide to the Séminaire de Québec opens with an unlikely gardener: a young Prince Edward, future king of England, planting an elm in the seminary's oldest courtyard in 1860 while priests and schoolboys look on. It traces the institution to its founding in 1663 by the missionary bishop François de Laval, and follows generations of students, including a young Louis-Joseph Papineau, who turned that courtyard into their own patch of recess games rather than a place of solemn instruction. Look up at the sundial over the Procure wing as you listen for a sense of how long this yard has been keeping time.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.