Try to set aside at least 2 hours for a visit to this special museum, one of the most engrossing in all of Canada. Designed by Boston-based, McGill University-trained Moshe Safdie and opened in 1988, the Museum of Civilization is an innovative presence in the historic Basse-Ville, near Place Royale. A dramatic atrium-lobby sets the tone with a massive sculpture rising like jagged icebergs from the floor, a representation of the mighty St. Lawrence at spring breakup, more dramatic now that the a ship has been installed among the icebergs. Through the glass wall in back you can see the 1752 Maison Estèbe, now restored to contain the museum shop. It stands above vaulted cellars, which can also be viewed.

In the galleries upstairs are five permanent exhibitions, supplemented by up to six temporary exhibits on a variety of themes, many of them interactive. The mission of the museum has never been entirely clear, but never mind. For example, current exhibits run the gamut from a display on the color blue to an exhibit about the Middle Ages. Through highly imaginative display techniques, hands-on devices, computers, holograms, videos, and even an ant farm, the curators have ensured that visitors will be so enthralled by the experience that they won't pause to question its intent. If time is short, definitely use it to take in "Memoires," the permanent exhibit that is a sprawling examination of Québec history, moving from the province's roots as a fur-trading colony to the present. Furnishings from frontier homes, tools of the trappers' trade, worn farm implements, religious garments from the 19th century, and old campaign posters endow visitors with a rich sense of Québec's daily life from generation to generation. A new permanent exhibition is "Encounter with the First Nations," which examines the products and visions of the aboriginal tribes that inhabit Québec.

Exhibit texts are in French and English. There's a cafe on the ground floor.