Ottawa's Most Iconic Landmarks

Parliament Hill is the limestone escarpment above the Ottawa River where Canada's federal government sits, a group of Gothic Revival buildings begun in the 1860s to house the young Dominion.

The original Centre Block was destroyed in a catastrophic fire in 1916, and the rebuilt version, designed by John A. Pearson and Jean-Omer Marchand, gave the Hill the silhouette it is known for today.

The rebuilding's centrepiece is the Peace Tower, a soaring campanile completed in 1927 as a memorial to the Canadians who died in the First World War.

It rises roughly ninety-two metres, houses a carillon of fifty-three bells, and shelters the Memorial Chamber, whose Books of Remembrance list the war dead. From its observation level, when open, the view sweeps across the river to Gatineau and out over the downtown rooflines.

The surrounding grounds are as much a part of the experience as the buildings: the Centennial Flame burning at the foot of the walkway, statues of prime ministers and monarchs along the lawns, and the ceremonial Changing of the Guard on summer mornings.

Note that the Centre Block and Peace Tower are closed for a major, multi-year rehabilitation, so parts of the Hill are behind hoarding, though the grounds, the West Block, and the visitor experience remain open.

The National Gallery of Canada rises on Sussex Drive as a luminous structure of pink granite and glass, designed by Moshe Safdie and opened in 1988 to house an institution founded more than a century earlier.

Its great glass tower, echoing the Gothic pinnacles of the Library of Parliament across the river, floods the interior with northern light and gives the building an unmistakable presence on the skyline.

Inside, the collection is the finest in the country, anchored by an unrivalled survey of Canadian art: sweeping landscapes by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, works by the Automatistes, and a deep, thoughtfully presented collection of Indigenous and Inuit art.

European masters, contemporary installations, and photography fill the light-filled galleries that ramp gently upward around a central colonnade.

One of the gallery's quiet marvels is the Rideau Street Convent Chapel, a fan-vaulted nineteenth-century chapel saved from demolition and painstakingly reconstructed inside the museum, a hushed, candle-toned room in the middle of the modern building.

Between the art, the architecture, and the sweeping views of Parliament Hill from its windows, the gallery rewards both the art pilgrim and the casual visitor drawn simply by the light.

The ByWard Market is the historic market district just east of Parliament Hill, its street plan laid out in 1826 by Lieutenant Colonel John By as the commercial heart of the settlement growing up around his canal works.

Nearly two centuries later it remains one of the oldest and largest continuously operating public markets in the country, and one of Ottawa's most animated neighbourhoods.

At its centre is the market building on George Street, surrounded in the warmer months by open-air stalls where farmers, growers, and craftspeople sell produce, cut flowers, maple products, and handmade goods.

The surrounding grid of low brick and stone buildings is packed with restaurants, cafes, pubs, boutiques, and food shops, so the district hums from the morning market through to late in the evening.

The Market is also woven into Ottawa's food identity: it is where the BeaverTail, the fried, cinnamon-sugared pastry stretched into the shape of its namesake, first found fame, and its stalls and counters showcase Canadian staples from poutine to maple treats.

Between the history, the produce, the street life, and the murals hidden in its lanes, the ByWard Market is the most reliably lively place in the capital to eat, browse, and wander.

The Fairmont Château Laurier is the grand railway hotel that rises like a French Renaissance castle beside the Rideau Canal locks, its limestone walls, steep copper roofs, and pointed turrets echoing the Gothic silhouette of Parliament Hill next door.

Built by the Grand Trunk Railway and designed by the Montreal firm Ross and MacFarlane, it opened in 1912 and was named for Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the prime minister who championed it.

Its opening carried a note of tragedy: Charles Melville Hays, the railway president driving the project, died in the sinking of the Titanic just days before the hotel was to receive its first guests, delaying the celebration.

From the start the Château became the social and political crossroads of the capital, a place where deals were struck, receptions held, and, famously, the portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh kept a studio and residence for decades.

More than a century on, it remains a working luxury hotel and one of the most recognizable buildings in Ottawa, its chateauesque form anchoring the eastern end of the downtown core.

Its lobby, lounges, and the Zoe's dining room welcome the public, and its position between the canal, Major's Hill Park, and Parliament Hill makes it a natural landmark to orient yourself by anywhere in the centre of the city.

The Canadian War Museum occupies a striking, low-slung building on the LeBreton Flats west of downtown, its angular concrete and copper form and sloping green roof designed by Moriyama and Teshima with Griffiths Rankin Cook to suggest resilience, recovery, and regeneration.

Opened in 2005, it is the country's national museum of military history, telling Canada's story through conflict from earliest times to peacekeeping and the present.

The collection is sobering and vast, ranging from artillery and armoured vehicles to personal artifacts, art, and the sombre LeBreton Gallery packed with military hardware.

Among its most affecting holdings are the original war art collection and vehicles such as Adolf Hitler's parade limousine, presented within a clear-eyed account of the human cost of war.

The building's emotional climax is Regeneration Hall, a tall, narrowing wedge of light whose window frames the Peace Tower across the city, expressing the hope of rebuilding after conflict.

In the adjacent Memorial Hall, the museum's architecture performs a quiet miracle: the space holds a single headstone, and on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, sunlight falls through a high window to illuminate it exactly, aligning Remembrance Day with the room itself.

Major's Hill Park is the oldest public park in Ottawa, established in 1874 on the bluff between the Rideau Canal locks and the Ottawa River, a green plateau ringed by many of the capital's most important landmarks.

It occupies ground once tied to the canal's founder: the stone foundations of Lieutenant Colonel John By's own residence still lie within the park, marked for visitors to find.

The park's great gift is its vantage.

From its edges you look straight across the canal to Parliament Hill and the Library of Parliament, down onto the flight of eight canal locks and the Bytown Museum, over the river to the curving form of the Canadian Museum of History, and toward the turrets of the Château Laurier that share its eastern flank.

Few urban parks pack so many icons into a single sweep.

Mature trees, lawns, flowerbeds, and a central fountain make it a favourite spot for locals to picnic and pause, and it serves as a gathering ground during the city's festivals, from Canada Day crowds to the summer fireworks and light shows.

Quiet on an ordinary morning and thronged on a festival night, Major's Hill Park is both a peaceful green refuge and the best free grandstand in the capital.