Musée du Château Ramezay

Description:

• Benjamin Franklin was here. So, too, was Claude de Ramezay, the 11th governor of the colony, who built his residence at this site in 1705. The château became home to the city's royal French governors for almost 4 decades, until Ramezay's heirs sold it to a trading company in 1745. Fifteen years later it was taken over by British conquerors, and in 1775 an army of American revolutionaries invaded and held Montréal, using the château as their headquarters. For 6 weeks in 1776, Benjamin Franklin spent his days here, trying to persuade the Québécois to rise with the American colonists against British rule (he failed). After the American interlude, the house was used as a courthouse, a government office building, and headquarters for Laval University, before being converted into a museum in 1895.

  Old coins and prints, portraits, furnishings, tools, a loom, Amerindian artifacts, and other memorabilia related to the economic and social activities of the 18th and first half of the 19th century fill the main floor. In the cellar are the vaults of the original house.

  Sculpted, formal gardens (jardins) ringed by a low stone wall evoke 18th-century Parisian gardens and are a soothing respite from the busyness of Place Jacques-Cartier, a few steps away. A café overlooks the gardens in the summer.

  Between October and May, the château invites families to join in on the last Sunday of the month for an old-timey bread-making session using its 18th-century hearth. In the summer, there are workshops in the garden on how to make soap and beeswax candles, paper marbling, and more. Dates and details are listed on the website.

• © Frommer's 2012