The Fortifications

Over the next century, the French expended much time, energy, and money to shore up and strengthen the city's fortifications. The Dauphine Redoubt, built in 1712, is the only one of 11 such buildings that remains, and is fully restored and open to the public. After the fall of New France, the British were equally concerned about strengthening the city's defenses. They built an earth-and-wood citadelle atop Cap Diamant. During the Napoleonic Wars they added four medieval-looking martello towers to the fortifications. Of the three that remain, two are open to the public. The British also slowly replaced the wooden palisades that surrounded the city with the massive cut-stone wall that has become the city's trademark attraction. Oddly enough, improvement-minded civic leaders planned to tear the walls down in the 1870s, but Lord Dufferin, Canada's governor-general at the time, luckily vetoed that project.

The crowning touch to the city's fortifications came after the War of 1812, with the construction of the cut-stone, star-shape citadelle. An irregular pentagon with two cannon-lined sides facing the river below, the structure earned Québec City its 19th-century nickname "North America's Gibraltar." But it was never tested. Since 1814, relations between Canada and the United States have sometimes been a little tense, but never hostile. When the citadelle was finished, the city's fortifications took up one-quarter of the entire city's surface. American naturalist Henry David Thoreau was so struck with the fortress atmosphere of Québec City during a visit in 1850 that he wrote, "A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business."