(“Quebec City” (pronounced 
i/kwᵻˈbɛk/ or /kəˈbɛk/; French: Québec [kebɛk] (
listen)); French: Ville de Québec; officially Québec) is the capital city of the Canadian province of ‘Quebec’)
(in 2015 the city had a population estimate of 545,485, and the metropolitan area had a population of 806,400, making it Canada’s 7th-largest metropolitan area and Quebec’s 2nd-largest city after Montreal, which is about 260 kilometres (160 mi) to the southwest)
The narrowing of the Saint Lawrence River proximate to the city’s promontory, Cap-Diamant (Cape Diamond), and Lévis, on the opposite bank, provided the name given to the city, Kébec, an Algonquin word meaning “where the river narrows”.
Founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, Quebec City is one of the oldest cities in North America. The rampartssurrounding Old Quebec (Vieux-Québec) are the only fortified city walls remaining in the Americas north of Mexico, and were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 as the ‘Historic District of Old Québec’.
The city’s famous landmarks include the Château Frontenac, a hotel which dominates the skyline, and La Citadelle, an intact fortress that forms the centrepiece of the ramparts surrounding the old city.
(the National Assembly of Quebec (provincial legislature), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), and the Musée de la civilisation (Museum of Civilization) are found within or near Vieux-Québec)