Ottawa

A gothic block with the Peace Tower rising 92m at its centre. The bell sounds on the hour, and in summer carillon recitals are played in the afternoon.

The longest skating surface anywhere, opened only once the ice passes thirty centimetres. Stalls stand along it, and people queue with their skates still on.

Trading since 1826, with stalls and shops both inside the hall and around it. Produce fills it in summer and maple goods take over in winter.

Glass roofed galleries run through the building, and a spider nine metres tall stands at the entrance. Canadian painters and Indigenous artists share the same floor.

A tilted concrete building holding tanks and aircraft at full size. One window is set so that at 11:00 on 11 November the light falls exactly on a memorial stone.

It began with bulbs sent in thanks after the Dutch royal family was sheltered here during the war. A million flowers open in May along the lakeshore beds.

A hill park across the river where the leaves turn all at once in October. Its parkways close to cars on Sunday mornings for cyclists.

The governor general's grounds carry trees planted by visiting heads of state, each with a label. The garden costs nothing, and in summer a guide takes you inside the house.

A four storey government shelter dug during the cold war, now open as a museum. The blast door weighs nineteen tonnes, and the corridors run long enough to lose your bearings.

Eight locks step down from beside parliament to the river. When a boat passes, the gates are still cranked open by hand in front of you.

Across the river in Gatineau, Quebec, in a rippling building by Douglas Cardinal. Northwest Coast totem poles line its Grand Hall, with Parliament visible through the glass wall. Walking over the Alexandra Bridge takes a little over 20 minutes.

A castle-like stone building of 1912, where Parliament sat after the 1916 fire in its own building. A new glass tower now crowns the roof. The blue whale skeleton and dinosaur fossils draw the crowds.

A museum on the old Rockcliffe airfield, its vast hangar holding dozens of aircraft. The surviving nose section of the Avro Arrow, a fighter cancelled and scrapped, is on show. It lies east of downtown, best reached by car.

On summer mornings guards in scarlet tunics and bearskin hats change over on the lawn in front of Parliament. A military band marches in to start it, and it runs over 30 minutes. Front spots along the lawn's edge go early.

Where the Rideau River drops into the Ottawa River in a broad sheet like a curtain, which is what rideau means. A small island splits it into two falls. A park behind the old city hall looks down from above.

Housed in an 1827 stone storehouse beside the Rideau Canal locks, the oldest stone building left in Ottawa. It covers the labourers who dug the canal and the years when the town was called Bytown. It pairs naturally with watching the locks.

Closed to cars in 1967, it was one of Canada's early pedestrian streets. One block south of Parliament, its patios fill with civil servants at lunch. Street festivals and food stalls move in for the summer.