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The birthplace of Quebec City, Basse-Ville (Lower Town), can be reached from Terrasse Dufferin either by the steep escalier casse-cou (Breakneck Stairs) or by the funicular alongside (daily 7.30am-11pm, until midnight in summer; $1.25; www.funiculaire-quebec.com ), which turned out, in October 1996, to be far more dangerous than the stairs when a cable snapped and it plummeted - two people were killed and a dozen others injured. It reopened in 1998 and again ferries tourists between the upper and lower parts of the city. The Basse-Ville station of the funicular is the 1683 Maison Louis-Jolliet , 16 Petit-Champlain, built for the retired discoverer of the Mississippi, Louis Jolliet; it now houses a second-rate souvenir shop. Dating back to 1685, the narrow, cobbled rue du Petit-Champlain is the city's oldest street, and the surrounding area - known as Quartier du Petit-Champlain - is the oldest shopping area in North America. The boutiques and art shops in the quaint seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses are not too overpriced and offer an array of excellent crafts, from weird and wonderful ceramics to Inuit carvings. Older artefacts can be seen closer to the river, on the corner of boulevard Champlain and rue du Marche Champlain, where the 1752 Maison Chevalier and two adjoining nineteenth-century merchant houses - Maison Chesnay and Maison Freort - are now used by the Musee de la Civilisation to depict interior scenes comprising period furniture, costumes, toys, folk art and domestic objects (May to late June & early Sept to Oct Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; late June to early Sept daily 9.30am-5pm; Nov-April Sat & Sun 10am-5pm; free).
Your Tip for Basse-Ville
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