Among the most celebrated sights in Quebec City is the Château Frontenac, the great copper-roofed hotel that towers above the old town from the heights of Cape Diamond. Each year the landmark draws many thousands of visitors, who gather along the boardwalk of the Dufferin Terrace and photograph its turrets against the St. Lawrence River far below. Shops throughout the old quarter sell goods inspired by the building, including finely made miniature models so that travellers can carry a keepsake of it home. Guided walking tours, led by interpreters in period costume, set out from the hotel doors and wind through the surrounding streets in the heart of the walled city.

The Château Frontenac has meant a great deal to the people of Quebec for well over a century. It opened its doors in 1893, one of a chain of grand hotels built across the country by the Canadian Pacific Railway to lure travellers onto its trains. The design was the work of Bruce Price, an American architect who modelled the hotel on the châteaux of the French countryside. The building takes its name from Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac, a governor of New France in the seventeenth century. Perched on the cliff where earlier forts had once stood, the hotel soon came to stand for the city itself.