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British Columbia’s capital is also its most charming and atmospheric town, thanks to its waterfront location, remarkably mild climate, and splendid stone and brick buildings. Hemmed in on three sides by water, and liberally scattered with flower gardens and parks, Victoria is a great place for oceanside walks, with orcas often visible right from the shore. The picturesque boat-filled Inner Harbour, lined with Victoria’s most impressive architecture, is a wonderfully atmospheric spot. Among its attractions is the Royal British Columbia Museum, which provides an excellent overview of the province. Victoria also has a far better selection of restaurants and bars than you could reasonably expect of a town this size. The only drawback for visitors from the UK is an exaggerated Englishness aimed at American tourists, and many phoney sights are best avoided.

Easily reached from Vancouver by plane, bus or ferry then car/bike. The bus terminal is Downtown at 700 Douglas St.

major sights can be easily visited on foot and orientation is simple. A comprehensive bus service operates throughout the city. There are numerous bike lanes and trails, T 5984556, http://www.cycling victoria.com Travel Information Centre, 812 Wharf, Inner Harbour, T 9532033, http://www.tourismvictoria.com, 0900-1700, (1830 in summer).

Sights

Royal British Columbia Museum

675 Belleville St, T 3567226, http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca Daily 0900-1700. $10, $7 concessions. Corner of Government St. Helmcken House May-Oct 1000-1700, shorter hours the rest of the year. $5, $3 concessions.

Housed in a modest building to the south of the Empress, this fine museum consists of four permanent exhibitions. Many people’s favourite is the Open Ocean exhibit, which uses dark tunnels, lifts, films and state-of-the-art audiovisual wizardry to take you on a submarine adventure through the wonders and mysteries of the sea. Visitors are admitted half-hourly in groups of ten, so take a time-coded ticket and head on to the Natural History Gallery, where a series of extremely realistic dioramas evoke BC’s many varied and extraordinary landscapes. Set within brilliantly re-created environments, the animals are so expertly stuffed that you half expect them to move. Particularly popular is a life-sized example of the woolly mammoths that roamed these lands until 13,000 years ago.

The First Peoples Gallery uses works of art, wooden masks, carvings, ancient artefacts, original documents, films and audiovisual displays to recount the full, tragic history of British Columbia’s aboriginal nations. The journey through time is picked up with an exploration of the white man’s world in the Modern History Gallery, which contains as much information on the province’s social history as anyone could want, with countless artefacts and displays on the gold-rush and early pioneers, plus a re-creation of turn-of-the-last-century Victoria, complete with cobblestone streets, buildings and alleys, and a movie house that shows silent films. The museum also contains the National Geographic Imax Theatre, T 4804887, http://www.imaxvictoria.com

Behind the museum on Elliot Street is Thunderbird Park whose collection of modern totem poles complements the First Nations Gallery within. A small carving shed offers the chance to see Native masters at work.

Next door at 10 Elliot Street is Helmcken House, the oldest surviving house in BC. Built in 1852 for a pioneer physician, it contains an unusually intact set of frightening 19th-century medical implements, as well as lots of other Victoriana.

Inner Harbour

Parliament Building, T 3873046. Daily 0830-1700.

A multitude of assorted craft, from kayaks and ferries to yachts and float-planes, ply these waters where passenger steamships once unloaded their genteel cargo. The wide open space and undeniable grandeur of the surrounding architecture conspire to create a magical ambience, especially in summer when the harbour walkway throngs with art peddlers, buskers and tourists. The view landwards is entirely dominated by Victoria’s grandest constructions, three of which were designed by architect Francis Rattenbury. The Empress Hotel was built in 1908 and retains the opulence of the Victorian era splendidly. You can go in and explore the many lounges, lobbies and dining halls, all dripping with colonial excess; maybe have a drink beneath the Tiffany-glass dome of the Crystal Lounge, or join the staggering number who attend the ritual of high tea in the Tea Lounge. Built in 1897, the equally extravagant Parliament Building sets the tone for the whole town, especially at night when it’s evocatively illuminated by 3,333 tiny lightbulbs. The inside can be visited on a free guided tour, but despite the anecdotes and efforts of the guides, and a few historical artefacts such as the dagger that killed Captain Cook, it’s really not as impressive as the exterior.

The Inner Harbour has several minor attractions, most of them geared towards kids: Miniature World, 649 Humboldt Street, T 3859731, http://www.miniatureworld.com, features tiny reconstructions of various themes and a scale model of the coast-to-coast Canadian Pacific Railway; Crystal Gardens, 713 Douglas Street, T 3811213, is a 1925 glassed-in conservatory designed by Rattenbury, containing tropical gardens and 65 different endangered creatures, such as tiny monkeys the size of a finger; the Royal London Wax Museum, 470 Belleville Street, T 3884461, http://www.waxworld.com, yet another design by the prolific Rattenbury, has its own mandatory but gruesome Chamber of Horrors; and the Pacific Undersea Gardens, 490 Belleville Street, T 3825717, http://www.pacificunderseagardens.com, in front of the Parliament Buildings, is a giant underwater aquarium with instructors who swim and perform alongside a vast array of colourful, bizarre and fascinating ocean-dwellers.

Four blocks behind the Parliament Building, at 207 Government Street, is Emily Carr House, May-Oct 1000-1700, 1200-1600 Feb-Mar, $5.35. This 1864 house is where the much-loved Canadian painter and writer was born and lived most of her twilight years, surrounded by all sorts of animals. Her paintings are important historically as well as artistically, because she made a visual record of the coastal First Nations of the time. There is a gift shop and a small art gallery showing the work of local artists.

Downtown

Maritime Museum, 28 Bastion Sq, T 3854222, http://www.mmbc.bc.ca  Daily 0930-1630. $6, $2 concessions.

Victoria Bug Zoo, 631 Courtney Street, Victoria, BC, CANADA ph.(250) T 384-28471107, http://www.bugzoo.bc.caMonday to Saturday : 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM Sunday: 11:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Adults $7, Students $6, Seniors $5, Children 3-16 Yrs $4.50, Children 2yrs and under FREE!.

This is Victoria’s oldest quarter and if you look up above the tacky gift shops on Government Street with their nasty ground-floor façades, you’ll discover some fine brick and stone buildings. Check out, for example, the art nouveau-style tobacconists at No 1116. While here, be sure to have a look in Hill’s at No 1006 whose wide selection of First Nations masks, carvings and jewellery is one of the best you’ll see.

For first-class restaurants and bars – the area’s real attraction – wander down adjacent streets like Yates.

Nearby is Victoria Bug Zoo, an off-beat but strangely compelling collection of weird and wonderful insects from around the world. Concentrated around Fisgard Street and the absurdly named Gate of Harmonious Interest is the oldest Chinatown in Canada, where eating is the main event. Fan Tan Alley, former red-light district and the narrowest street in Canada, has some nice little shops to explore.

Bastion Square, site of the original Fort Victoria, is pleasant enough, but there’s little to see except the handsome former provincial courthouse which today houses the Maritime Museum. Several exhibition spaces here contain myriad artefacts from the Pacific Northwest’s maritime history, highlight of which is the Tillikum, the dug-out canoe in which Captain John Voss made his three-year attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1901.

Beacon Hill Park and the Coast

Open 24 hours daily. Free. Bus No 5 or No 11.

To reach the third key area of Victoria, follow Douglas Street south to the ocean and the beautiful Beacon Hill Park, where you will see the results of Victoria’s wonderful climate. Winding paths pass all kinds of trees, from mighty old-growth giants to ornamental deciduous species, past duck-ponds, swans and roaming peacocks, between gardens where tens of thousands of flowers are lovingly tended and arranged. There are also some excellent free tennis courts, lawn bowling, a soccer field and a cricket pitch, as well as a petting zoo for children, mid-Mar-mid-Oct, by donation. From here it is a lovely stroll along the ocean, with many good viewpoints and trails down to the rock pools. Those with a vehicle or bike should follow the coast east along Dallas Road, taking the scenic routes and admiring the grand houses, maybe as far as the genteel community of Oak Bay. Orcas can sometimes be seen from the oceanfront along Dallas Road. To get closer, there are plenty of operators desperate to take you whale-watching.

Butchart Gardens

Keating Rd, T 6525256, http://www.butchartgardens.com Daily 0900-2230 in summer, earlier in winter. $18 ($14 off-season), $7 concessions, $2 children. 20 km north of Victoria, 20 km south of ferry. Follow red signs west from Highway 17. Central Saanich bus route No 75 from Douglas St, or Laidlaw bus (9 daily, T 3854411).

By far the most celebrated of Victoria’s gardens, these cover 20 ha and include Japanese, rose, Italian, and sunken gardens. Beautiful in any season, the gardens are spectacularly illuminated at night. Stunning firework displays set to music take place on Saturday evenings in July and August at no extra cost, and there’s often live music and puppet shows. The site contains a gift shop, restaurant, coffee shop and a dining room serving high tea.

While this far out, you might as well head three minutes south to 1461 Benvenuto Road and take in the Butterfly Gardens, daily Mar-Sep 0900-1700, $8.75, $7.75 seniors, $5 children, an indoor conservatory packed with colourful ‘critters’ that flutter by.

Abkhazi Gardens

1964 Fairfield Rd, T 4798053, http://www.conservancy.bc.ca Mar-Oct 1300-1600, Wed-Fri and Sun. $8, $4.50 concessions suggested donation. Bus No 7 from town.

A closer, cheaper, but much smaller alternative to Butchart is the Abkhazi Gardens, a gorgeous property created by Prince and Princess Abkhazi in the 1940s and recently saved from housing developers through a purchase by the Land Conservancy. The upper garden affords great views of Victoria and the Juan de Fuca Strait.

Craigdarroch Castle

1050 Joan Crescent, T 5925323, 0900-1900 in summer, 1000-1630 in winter. $10, $5.50 concessions, $2.50 children. Off Fort St. Bus No 11 or 14 from Downtown.

If you still have time, a few reasonable sights are clustered together not far east of Downtown in an area called Rockland. Of these, the most interesting is Craigdarroch Castle, which was built in 1887-89 by Robert Dunsmuir, a Scottish mining expert who was drafted in to help exploit the black seams further north in Nanaimo and ended up discovering the most productive coal mine in North America. Thanks to a shrewd business sense and utter lack of scruples, he became BC’s first millionaire, his net worth mounting to $20 million by the time he died. Ironically, this happened just six months before his castle was completed. If you visit one historical building in Victoria, make it this one. The rooms are exquisitely furnished, with magnificent stained glass, immaculate Victorian furnishings and ornaments, and a few oddities like a 3-D picture made entirely out of human hair. Be sure to linger over the first few rooms, as these are the best.

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

1040 Moss St, T 3844101, http://www.aggv.bc.ca Mon-Sat 1000-1700, Thu 1000-2100, Sun 1300-1700, $5, $3 concessions, under 12s free; donation only on Mon. East of Downtown off Fort St. Bus No 11, 22 or 14.

Victoria’s main Art Gallery is less impressively housed than Vancouver’s, and far more likely to appeal to those whose tastes do not run to modern art. Its extensive permanent collection is constantly rotated and includes a massive store of Japanese art as well as quite a few of Emily Carr’s less distinguished works. There are always a few visiting exhibitions too, so most people should find something they like.

While in the area you might also want to take a stroll around the 6 ha of ornamental gardens at Government House, 1401 Rockland Avenue, T 3872080 (bus No 1); this is where the British Royal Family stays when visiting.

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