Musée de la civilisation

Moshe Safdie's building in Quebec City's Old Port wraps modern galleries around fragments of the older city, including the Maison Estèbe, an 18th-century merchant's house whose vaulted cellars survive inside the museum. Opened in 1988, the Musée de la civilisation takes human societies, rather than art or natural history, as its subject, and it draws more than half a million visitors a year.

Its long-term exhibitions centre on the history and identity of Quebec, from New France to the present, and on the First Nations and Inuit of the province. Temporary shows explore themes from science and society to cultures elsewhere in the world. The displays tend to build around ideas and stories rather than rows of objects, and many include multimedia and hands-on elements.

The museum suits visitors curious about how Quebec came to be. It sits among the narrow streets of the lower town, close to Place-Royale and below the Château Frontenac.