Steep stone stairs and plastered stone houses inside city walls, with the copper roofed Château Frontenac above the river.
What Old Quebec looks like
Old Québec is two districts on one cliff. The Upper Town sits on the heights, and the Lower Town runs along the river at the foot of Cap Diamant. Steep stairways and streets join them. The look down on , and the Côte de la Montagne climbs from the Lower Town to the Upper Town.
On Petit-Champlain and , the houses are two and three storeys of plastered stone under gabled roofs. Dormer windows sit in the roofs, and firewalls rise above the rooftops.
Rue du Petit-Champlain, the district's main street, has a trompe l'oeil painting of about 100 square metres covering one wall. The district is a small commercial zone under the cliff.
The dominates the skyline from the promontory. It has 18 floors and stands about 80 metres tall, with copper roofs. The runs around the hotel from the northeast to the southeast, above the river.
More than four kilometres of fortifications surround the old town. The still stands on its site, a gate begun in 1878.
Place Royale is a Lower Town square with the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires church beside it. The sits in the Upper Town, with mature trees and grey stone buildings across the road.
From the Terrasse Dufferin, the Saint Lawrence River lies below the terrace. The Lower Town sits directly beneath it, between the cliff and the water.
Shot in Old Quebec
The 1953 Hitchcock film I Confess shot its opening at the Château Frontenac, and the hotel's interiors appear in it too. The tvN series Goblin used the red door on rue du Petit-Champlain, the emergency exit of the Théâtre Petit Champlain. The series La Faille used the hotel as a location in its second season, The Chateau Murder, which aired in 2021. Scenes of the television series Barkskins were filmed in the Petit-Champlain district and at Place Royale. Place Royale stands in for the French village of Montrichard in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can.
I Confess, 1953
Château Frontenac
The opening scene of the film was shot at the hotel, and the production also shot interiors there. The film's climax is set in the grand ballroom.
A castle stands on the rock at the head of the old town, and tall tenements stand on the slope beneath it. Narrow alleys run steeply between them, the same stair street arrangement as the Upper and Lower Town here. Multi-storey tenements and the castle on its rock give Edinburgh away in a wide frame. Keep the shot tight on the alleys. Try searching narrow alleys and tenements now.
The reconstruction used 18th century French masonry techniques on a fortress site, so its stonework has the same period look. The Lower Town houses are plastered, though. Only part of the fortress is rebuilt, so tighter frames on the rebuilt stone hold the period. Wide shots will show the unrebuilt remainder. Try searching French fortress masonry now.
