Église St-Roch

Québec City


Measuring over 80m long, 34m wide and 46m high (including the steeples), St-Roch is the largest church in Québec City and can seat 1250 people. Begun in 1914, it was finished off in 1923 in a mixed neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque style by Louis-Napoléon Audet, the same man who worked on the monumental Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré Basilica 35km to the northeast. The 'marble' (actually limestone) inside the church is from Saskatchewan. See if you can detect faint fossil imprints in it.

In mid-August the church hosts its annual Bénédiction des Chiens (Blessing of the Dogs), an event unparalleled elsewhere in Canada (and probably the world).