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Sweeping out from Porte St-Louis and flanked by grand Victorian mansions, the tree-lined boulevard of Grande-Allee is proclaimed the city's equivalent of the Champs Elysees, with its bustling restaurants, hotels and bars. Adjacent to the Loews Le Concorde hotel, Place Montcalm has a monument to Montcalm and a more recent statue of Charles de Gaulle, the French president who declared "Vive le Quebec libre" in the 1960s, much to the separatists' delight. This area is now known as Parliament Hill, a new name that caused a lot of controversy, as Canada's Parliament area in Ottawa has the same title and anglophones thought it presumptuous of Quebec City to label itself like a capital city. However, there is indeed a hill here, and upon it, at the eastern end of Grande-Allee, stand the stately buildings of the Hotel du Parlement (late June to early Sept Mon-Fri 9am-4.30pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4.30pm; early Sept to late June Mon-Fri 9am-4.30pm; www.assnat.qc.ca ), designed by Eugene-Etienne Tache in 1877 in the Second Empire style using the Louvre for inspiration. The ornate facade includes niches for twelve bronze statues by Quebecois sculptor Louis-Philippe Hebert of Canada's and Quebec's major statesmen, while finely chiselled and gilded walnut panels in the entrance hall depict important moments in Quebec's history, coats of arms and other heraldic features. From here the corridor of the President's Gallery, lined with portraits of all the Legislative Assembly's speakers and presidents, leads to the Chamber of the National Assembly, where the 125 provincial representatives meet for debate.
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