$6.99City Highlights
Quebec City Audio Walking Tours
Self-guided, narrated walks through Quebec City. Buy a tour once, download it, and hear the story at each stop while you walk at your own pace.
Tours from $6.99
Friends walk free. One purchase covers everyone on your walk. Start the tour, invite your friends to join, and it plays on every phone in your group.
5.0 on Google Play
Quebec City audio tours
Each tour is a mapped route with narration at every stop. Buy it once and it is yours to keep, no subscription.
$6.99City Highlights
$8.99City HighlightsWhat to expect on a Quebec City audio walking tour
A Quebec City audio walk drops into the Lower Town where New France began, antique shops and a chateau-style train station by the water, or climbs into the walled Upper Town past a star-shaped fortress and the only city gates left standing north of Mexico.
The Lower Town Walk starts on Rue du Petit-Champlain, one of the oldest shopping streets in North America, and leads to Place Royale, the square where Samuel de Champlain built his first trading post in 1608, 2.1 kilometers, about 28 minutes, almost entirely flat.
From there it follows Rue Saint-Paul's antique shops along the old port to the Old Port Market and finishes at Gare du Palais, the chateau-style railway station that still welcomes trains from Montreal under its copper roof.
The Upper Town Walk climbs higher, 3.4 kilometers, about 47 minutes, from the Parliament Building through Porte Saint-Louis to the star-shaped Citadelle, then along the boardwalk below the Chateau Frontenac to the basilica, the old Augustines hospital and the gate at Porte Saint-Jean.
Where to walk in Quebec City
A few of the stops you will pass, and why they are worth slowing down for.
Dufferin Terrace and the Chateau Frontenac
Dufferin Terrace is the broad wooden boardwalk that runs along the cliff edge below the Chateau Frontenac, often called the most photographed hotel in the world. The Canadian Pacific Railway opened the hotel in 1893 to lure wealthy travelers onto its trains, giving it the copper roofs and turrets of a French castle. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met here twice during the Second World War, helping shape the plans for the invasion of Normandy. Walk the terrace for the view out over the St. Lawrence, and look for the statue of Champlain at its northern end, honoring the man who founded the city in the Lower Town just below.
Rue du Petit-Champlain
Rue du Petit-Champlain is a narrow, car-free lane of stone houses with painted shutters and flower boxes, squeezed between the cliff and the river, often called one of the oldest shopping streets in North America. People have traded on this strip of shore since the 1600s, and by the mid-twentieth century it had grown run down before its revival into the boutiques and galleries you see today. Look back toward the foot of the Breakneck Stairs, the oldest stairway in the city, dropping steeply from the Upper Town above. In December the street is strung with lights and fir trees, looking like something off a Christmas card.
Old Quebec's Rooftops
Old Quebec's Lower Town is built of tightly packed stone houses with steep metal roofs, dormer windows and flower boxes spilling color over worn sills. Looking down on them, you get a sense of how small and densely built this first French foothold in North America really was, every roofline a slightly different pitch and color. The lanes below wind between these houses much as they did when merchants and sailors worked this shore, and the view from a height shows just how much of Old Quebec's original layout has survived. It's one of the few old port quarters in North America that still looks this way.
The Upper Town Streets
The Upper Town's streets are lined with grand stone townhouses built for merchants and officials of New France, their steep roofs and tall chimneys crowded close together behind the city walls. In autumn the trees along these streets turn gold and red against the gray stone, with the dark spire of the Chateau Frontenac often visible above the rooftops in the distance. Quebec City is the only city north of Mexico that still stands inside its old walls, and nowhere is that more obvious than on these close, quiet streets between the fortifications and the cliff. Come back in another season and the same row of houses looks like a different city.
Parliament Building
Quebec's Parliament Building went up between 1877 and 1886 in the Second Empire style of Paris, its facade lined with niches holding bronze figures from the province's past, explorers, governors and politicians added over decades. Above the main door, under the coat of arms, are three carved words: Je me souviens, I remember, a phrase that became the province's motto and appears on every license plate. At night the building is lit gold, the fountain in front glowing beside it, a grand note to start or end a walk through the walled city behind it. Nobody has ever quite settled what Quebec is meant to remember.
Get the Audio Tour in 3 Simple Steps
All in the free Walk With Me app, and the first stops of every tour are free to try.
Tap the Gold Headphones and Pick a Tour
01
Walk It Solo or Invite Someone
02
Press Play and Walk
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Handcrafted for Your Time in the City
These tours aren't a checklist of sights. They're made to be walked slowly, headphones on, eyes on the city.
Meditative and Immersive
Each story is told where it happened. The app chimes when you reach a stop, one tap starts the story, and the stretch between stops is yours to take in at your own pace.
Handcrafted With Care
We choose every route and every stop ourselves and shape each story with care, so the time you have in the city goes to the places most worth seeing.
Better With Someone
Every walk is better with someone beside you, so if you can bring a friend, we really hope you do. That's why one purchase covers everyone you invite: they join your tour free.