Parliament Hill
Parliament Hill (French: Colline du Parlement), colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern bank of the Ottawa River that houses the Parliament of Canada in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It accommodates a suite of Gothic revival buildings whose architectural elements were chosen to evoke the history of parliamentary democracy. Parliament Hill attracts approximately three million visitors each year. The Parliamentary Protective Service is responsible for law enforcement on Parliament Hill and in the parliamentary precinct, while the National Capital Commission is responsible for maintaining the nine-hectare (22-acre) area of the grounds.
This article is about the government buildings in Ottawa, Canada. For other uses, see Parliament Hill (disambiguation).
- Parliament Hill
- Colline du Parlement
- Parliament Hill
- Colline du Parlement
1859–1876
- Calvert Vaux, Marshall Wood (landscapes)
- Thomas Scott (oversight)
3 million annually
Grounds of the Parliament Buildings National Historic Site of Canada
1976
Development of the area, which in the 18th and early 19th centuries was the site of a military base, into a governmental precinct began in 1859 after Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada. Following several extensions to the Parliament and departmental buildings, and a fire in 1916 that destroyed the Centre Block, Parliament Hill took on its present form with the completion of the Peace Tower in 1927. In 1976, the Parliament Buildings and the grounds of Parliament Hill were designated as National Historic Sites of Canada. Since 2002, an extensive $3 billion renovation-and-rehabilitation project has been underway throughout the precinct's buildings that is expected to be completed after 2028.
History[edit]
Early use[edit]
Parliament Hill is a limestone outcrop with a gently sloping top that was originally covered in a primeval forest of beech and hemlock.[1] For hundreds of years, the hill was a landmark on the Ottawa River for First Nations people and later for European traders, adventurers, and industrialists, marking their journeys to the interior of the continent.[1] After the founding of Ottawa, which was then called Bytown, the builders of the Rideau Canal sited a military base on the hill,[2] naming it Barrack Hill. A large fortress was planned for the site following the War of 1812 and the Upper Canada rebellion but the threat of an American invasion subsided and the project was scrapped.[2]