Charlottetown is the capital city of Prince Edward Island, one of the Atlantic Provinces of Canada.
It's a quaint and pretty town, small enough to be able to walk around, and has lots of good restaurants and bars. It's also within easy reach of the
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Cityscape and architecture
Downtown Charlottetown includes the city's historic five hundred lots, as surveyed by Captain Samuel Holland, as well as the waterfront facing the harbor and the Hillsborough River. Adjacent communities to the original downtown included Brighton, Spring Park, Sherwood, and Parkdale. The areas to the west, north, and east of downtown have been developed in recent decades with several residential and commercial/retail developments, although the outer regions of the city are still predominantly farmland, as is an area in the center of the city where an Agriculture Canada experimental crop research station is located.
The Agriculture Canada research station farm is the last remnant of the Queens Royalty common pasture lands and creates a large greenspace in the center of the city, north of downtown. The development of the township of Queens Royalty, with its 5-hectare (12-acre) estates surveyed during the 18th and 19th centuries along a north-south axis, forced early road networks into a grid.
The present-day Charlottetown landscape is dominated by urban development along the waterfront areas, suburban development to the west, north, and east, as well as the airport to the north. Commercial development, aside from the central business district, is concentrated along several road corridors:
- University Avenue/Malpeque Road
- North River Road/Lower Malpeque Road
- St. Peter's Road
- Mount Edward Road
- Kensington Road
The downtown core is augmented by several feeder streets:
- Queen Street
- Water Street
- Grafton Street
The city's streetscape with a centrally planned downtown core containing many Victorian-era houses and buildings is an attraction, as well as the waterfront redevelopment project in recent decades which has seen walking trails and parks developed on former industrial lands. A new cruise ship terminal was opened by the port authority in September 2007 which, proponents hope, will make the city a more attractive destination for the growing number of vessels operating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Popular attractions within the city include the provincial legislature at Province House, which hosted the Charlottetown Conference, as well as Founders Hall, a recently redeveloped railway maintenance building which now houses an interactive trip through history tracing the development of Canada as a nation.
The Confederation Centre of the Arts provides live theatre, including the Charlottetown Festival during the summer months, as well as a nationally ranked art gallery. The Charlottetown Festival itself is headlined by Canada's most popular and longest-running musical, Anne of Green Gables - The Musical, which is an adaptation of Island author Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel. Several other small theaters and galleries can be found immediately surrounding the Confederation center including the Mac (MacKenzie theatre), the Arts Guild, and Pilar Shepard gallery.
There are 11 National Historic Sites of Canada located in Charlottetown, including Province House and the Confederation Centre of the Arts.