The Most Beautiful Places in Quebec
11 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Quebec are Habitat 67, Montreal Biosphère and Montmorency Falls. The list covers 11 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Quebec stretches from the St. Lawrence valley, where French settlers founded their first towns, to the tundra of Nunavik in the far north. Most of it lies on the ancient rock of the Canadian Shield, scoured by ice into countless lakes, while the river and the Gulf of St. Lawrence gave it cliffs, islands and sea stacks. French language and Catholic heritage shaped its cities, and Montreal added a strong modern streak.
Near Quebec City, Montmorency Falls drops 83 metres into the St. Lawrence, roughly thirty metres higher than Niagara. At the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula, Percé Rock is a huge limestone block rising from the sea, pierced by an arch. Far to the north, the Pingualuit Crater holds an almost perfectly round lake of exceptionally clear water left by a meteorite impact.
Montreal shows two faces of the province. Notre-Dame Basilica is a Gothic Revival church whose deep blue vault, scattered with gold stars, frames an interior of carved wood. Habitat 67, built by Moshe Safdie for the 1967 World's Fair, stacks concrete housing units into a terraced hill on the edge of the river.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Habitat 67 | Monument | |
| 2 | Montreal Biosphère | Museum | |
| 3 | Montmorency Falls | Waterfall | |
| 4 | Château Frontenac | Castle | |
| 5 | Notre-Dame Basilica, Montreal | Church building | |
| 6 | Rue du Petit-Champlain | Pedestrian street | |
| 7 | Pingualuit Crater | Impact crater | |
| 8 | Percé Rock | Stack | |
| 9 | Bonaventure Island | Island | |
| 10 | Mingan Archipelago | Rock formation | |
| 11 | Saguenay Fjord | Fjord |
01 Habitat 67
Canada · 3.2 km from Montreal45.500° N 73.544° W
Image by ifinnsson from Pixabay On a spit of land in the St. Lawrence River, opposite Old Montreal, hundreds of concrete boxes are stacked at angles into three stepped hills, so that the roof of one home becomes the garden of the next.
Did you know? Each home is made of one to eight of the identical concrete boxes, and private terraces range from roughly 20 to 90 square metres.
02 Montreal Biosphère
Canada · 4.4 km from Montreal45.514° N 73.531° W
Meg.jenk · CC BY-SA 4.0 On Saint Helen's Island in the St. Lawrence River, a huge lattice sphere catches the light above the trees. The Montreal Biosphere is the steel skeleton of a geodesic dome designed by R. Buckminster Fuller with Shoji Sadao for Expo 67, 76 metres across and 62 metres high.
Did you know? One Expo 67 exhibit, American Spirit, displayed around 300 hats representing the regions and trades of the United States.
03 Montmorency Falls
Canada · 9.4 km from Quebec City46.891° N 71.147° W
Wladyslaw · CC BY-SA 3.0 Just before the Montmorency River meets the St. Lawrence it drops over a cliff in a single white curtain 83 metres high, some 30 metres taller than Niagara.
Did you know? The falls drop along a geological fault where the ancient rocks of the Canadian Shield meet the younger sedimentary layers of the St. Lawrence Lowlands.
04 Château Frontenac
Canada · 4.4 km from Quebec City46.812° N 71.205° W
Image by bull1961 from Pixabay Few buildings own a skyline the way the Château Frontenac owns Quebec City.
Did you know? With its central tower, the building has 18 floors, rises about 80 metres and offers some 610 guest rooms.
05 Notre-Dame Basilica, Montreal
Notre-Dame Basilica
Canada · 2.3 km from Montreal45.504° N 73.556° W
Image by dolcece from Pixabay From Place d'Armes the Notre-Dame Basilica looks sober enough: a grey stone Gothic Revival front between two square towers.
Did you know? The two towers were finished in 1841 and 1843 by John Ostell, who completed them after O'Donnell's death following the original plans.
06 Rue du Petit-Champlain
Canada · 4.5 km from Quebec City46.812° N 71.204° W
chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0 Rue du Petit-Champlain is a narrow street squeezed between the cliff of Cap Diamant and the lower town of Quebec City.
Did you know? The lane began in the seventeenth century as a footpath leading to a spring known as the Champlain fountain.
07 Pingualuit Crater
Canada61.278° N 73.664° W
NASA. Courtesy of Denis Sarrazin. · Public domain 4 million years ago — one of the older confirmed impact sites in North America.
Did you know? A US Army Air Forces weather flight over Ungava photographed the raised crater rim on 20 June 1943.
08 Percé Rock
Perce Rock
Canada48.524° N 64.199° W
Image by nightelves from Pixabay Seen from the shore at Percé, the rock looks less like a piece of geology than a vessel: a long, sheer-sided slab of limestone lying in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with its bow to the sea, often compared to a ship under sail.
Did you know? The rock is siliceous limestone threaded with veins of sandstone and siltstone, with sheer faces on every side.
09 Bonaventure Island
Canada48.495° N 64.160° W
Gilbertus · Public domain Every summer the flat top of Bonaventure Island turns white with northern gannets: tens of thousands of nesting pairs packed beak to beak on the plateau and along the cliffs, filling the air with noise and the sea around with diving birds. Lying in the Gulf of St.
Did you know? When Quebec took over the island in 1971, about 35 families had to leave their homes.
10 Mingan Archipelago
Canada50.209° N 63.589° W
Image by nabenoite from Pixabay Along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off the coast of Quebec's Côte-Nord, the sea and the frost have carved low limestone islands into a gallery of stone figures.
Did you know? Besides the Mingan thistle, a rare variety of the sparrow's-egg lady's-slipper orchid carries the archipelago's name.
11 Saguenay Fjord
Canada · 36.2 km from Rivière-du-Loup48.132° N 69.727° W
Image by cleprovost from Pixabay For about 105 km before it meets the St. Lawrence, the Saguenay River flows through a true fjord — a trench gouged by ice, two to four kilometres wide, walled by cliffs that average 150 metres and in places rise to 350, and filled with water averaging 210 metres deep.
Did you know? In 2008 the Royal Canadian Mint issued a 25-cent coin bearing the image of the Cap Trinité statue.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Quebec?
- On our list, Habitat 67 ranks first, followed by Montreal Biosphère and Montmorency Falls.
- Is Montmorency Falls higher than Niagara Falls?
- Yes. Montmorency Falls is 83 metres high, about thirty metres higher than Niagara Falls, although Niagara carries far more water.
- How was the Pingualuit Crater formed?
- It was formed by a meteorite impact roughly 1.4 million years ago. The crater is about 3.4 kilometres wide and holds a lake fed only by rain and snow, which makes its water exceptionally clear.
- What is Habitat 67?
- Habitat 67 is a housing complex in Montreal designed by the architect Moshe Safdie for Expo 67. It is made of prefabricated concrete modules stacked so that each home has its own terrace.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Quebec?
- In our collection, the places in Quebec are most often rock formations (2), natural arches (1), fjords (1) and impact craters (1).
- How many places are on this list in Quebec?
- The list covers 11 places.