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Trip ideas  /  5 days in Quebec City  /  Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral-Basilica
Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral-Basilica, Quebec City, Quebec
Cultural building · Quebec City, Quebec

Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral-Basilica

The oldest church in Canada.A crypt for the bishops.

Photo: Sylvainbrousseau, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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The first

It is the oldest church in Canada and the first made a basilica

The cathedral is the seat of the Archdiocese of Quebec. It was the first church in Canada to be elevated to the rank of minor basilica, an honor it received from Pope Pius IX in 1874.

The chapel

It stands on the site of a chapel that Champlain built in 1633

Samuel de Champlain built the chapel of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance on the site in 1633. Work on the first cathedral began in 1647, and it was given the name Notre-Dame de la Paix.

1759

The first fire came in 1759, during the Siege of Quebec

The cathedral was rebuilt from plans drafted in 1743 by Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry. Jean Baillairgé designed the belltower, and he and his son François designed the interior from 1786 to 1822.

1922

After the fire of 1922 an arsonist confessed in prison

The church was gutted by fire in 1922, and the Ku Klux Klan was initially suspected of arson. In 1927 an American career criminal, Ray Marsden, confessed in prison to a series of church arsons done to cover his burglaries.

The crypt

Four governors of New France are buried in the crypt

The bishops of Quebec are also buried in the crypt, including the first, François de Laval. The church is a National Historic Site of Canada, within the Historic District of Old Québec.

Day 5, morning

It comes after Governors' Garden. Then Rue du Trésor.

More stories from this trip idea

The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Cathedral Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.

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