Old town Travel Guide

The oldest part of Victoria focuses on Bastion Square , original site of Fort Victoria, from which it's a short walk to Market Square, a nice piece of old-town rejuvenation, and the main downtown shopping streets. Bastion Square's former saloons, brothels and warehouses have been spruced up to become offices, cafés and galleries. The modest Maritime Museum at 28 Bastion Square (daily 9.30am-4.30pm; $5; tel 385-4222, www.mmbc.bc.ca ) is of interest mainly for the lovely chocolate-and-vanilla-coloured building in which it's housed, the former provincial courthouse. Displays embrace old charts, uniforms, ships' bells, period photographs, lots of models and a new BC Ferries section on the second floor. On the top floor is the restored vice-admiralty courtroom, once the main seat of justice for the entire province. Note the old open elevator built to reach it, commissioned by Chief Justice Davie in 1901, supposedly because he was too fat to manage the stairs. Just to the north lies the attractive Market Square , the old heart of Victoria but now a collection of some 65 speciality shops and cafés around a central courtyard (bounded by Store, Pandora and Johnson sts). This area erupted in 1858 following the gold rush, providing houses, saloons, opium dens, stores and various salacious entertainments for thousands of chancers and would-be immigrants. On the Pandora side of the area was a ravine, marked by the current sunken courtyard, beyond which lay Chinatown (now centred slightly further north on Fisgard) the American west coast's oldest. Here, among other things, 23 factories processed 90,000 pounds of opium a year for what was then a legitimate trade and - until the twentieth century - one of BC's biggest industries. As for the downtown shopping streets , it's worth looking out for E.A. Morris, a wonderful old cigar and tobacco shop next to Murchie's coffee shop at 1110 Government St, and Roger's Chocolates, 913 Government St, whose whopping Victoria creams (among other things) are regularly dispatched to Buckingham Palace for royal consumption.