Fodor's Expert Review Séminaire de Québec

Behind iron gates, next to the Notre-Dame-de-Québec cathedral, lies a tranquil courtyard surrounded by austere stone buildings with rising steeples, structures that have housed classrooms and student residences since 1663. François de Montmorency Laval, the first bishop of New France, founded the Québec Seminary to train priests in the new colony. In 1852 the seminary gave birth to Université Laval, the first francophone university in North America.

Today priests still live on the premises, and Québec City's architecture school occupies part of the building. The small Second Empire–style Chapelle Extérieure, at the west entrance of the seminary, was built in 1888 after fire destroyed the 1750 original; its interior is patterned after that of the Église de la Trinité in Paris.