IT'S A big year for one of North America's oldest cities: Quebec City, in French Canada, celebrates its 400th birthday, and the highlight of 12 months of celebrations takes place next month.

Anniversary or not, Quebec is an intriguing little place, well worth the three-hour train journey from Montreal for a taste of its curious old-world charm.

Quebec is an Algonquin word meaning “where the river narrows”, but the St Lawrence still looked pretty wide to me - a handsome sweep of water that crawls past the city's turrets and red mansards.

This quiet, reflective and intensely proud centre is also kind and enormously welcoming to visitors - opposing characteristics sired by its incongruous mix of North American optimism and French reserve. English is far less widely spoken here than in Montreal, and you will often find the locals sweetly apologising for their poor English (with no mention of your catastrophic French).

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The people were charming from the start, but I struggled to share the enthusiasm of my guide when I was shown around the oldest quarter of the city, and the area of which it is most proud: the Quartier Petit Champlain. It's known as the birthplace of French civilisation in North America - the building of New France began here in 1608 - but its lovely main square has been over-restored, and everything has an ersatz Disneylandish feel. Age is never attractive unless it's allowed to show its years.

The rue du Petit Champlain is the oldest commercial street in North America - some claim to fame, you would think - but this sweet cobbled thoroughfare has been spoilt by dozens of fatally cute tourist shops selling expensive tat and bad fashion.

Head up into Vieux-Quebec and the cutesiness still pervades the more touristy streets, but there are impressive things to see, such as the beautiful 17th-century seminary, with its white courtyard and silver-mansard roof, and the Ursuline Convent, another handsome building with a museum telling the stories of nuns who came to educate women in New France.

One building that you can't ignore - its bizarre turreted presence dominates the town from on high - is Château Frontenac, a 600-room hotel. Built for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Frontenac opened in 1893, and its faded, camp, turn-of-the-century interiors are fantastic and ludicrous in equal measure.

My favourite spots in the city were away from the old quarters, the dinky shops and the pompous reminders of the dawn of French civilisation in the New World, and into the areas where that civilisation thrives today. For me, this was down in Vieux-Port, or old port, around rue St Pierre, and the Saint-Roch district to the northwest.

Rue St Pierre and its environs are the old financial quarter. The area is elegant and handsome, with haughty 19th-century buildings, art galleries, antique shops and bistros. Life is more grown-up and sophisticated here - a relief from the cloying, Hansel-and-Gretel pantomime of Petit Champlain. There are some fine hotels, including Hotel 71, a restored boutique of 31 rooms, and the Auberge Saint-Antoine, home to some museum-standard displays of artefacts found in the old port - once the city's dump.

If you tire of bistro fare and want to sample the top end of Quebec's cuisine, make your way to Laurie Raphaël (www.laurieraphael.com) in the Vieux Port, a short walk from rue St Pierre.

Saint-Roch is another area where Quebec's earthier spirit comes alive. It was run-down for many years, but a regeneration programme has breathed new life into the area. Get there by taking the escalator, or very steep stairs, down to the lower town. It feels brasher here, but still charmingly French, with bistros crammed with customers enjoying a lunchtime beer and plat du jour.

No visit to Quebec would be complete without a visit to the Musée de la Civilisation. Much of this modern, well-designed museum is devoted to the development of French Canada, with exhibits and films examining its history, culture and politics, and what it means to be a Québécois. Nobody, from what I could glean, quite had the answer to this, but they certainly enjoyed talking about it.

You can just about do Quebec justice in a day, but three days won't let you down. The longer I stayed, the more I found myself charmed by the sweetness of its people, its remarkable history, the mixture of big-city elegance and small-town bad taste, and more deeply drawn into its most notable characteristic: its obsession with itself. Happy birthday, Quebec!

NEED TO KNOW

Return flights from Heathrow to Montreal with BA (0844 4930787, www.ba.com) cost from £490. Rail travel from Montreal to Quebec City takes three hours, and first-class tickets cost from £129 return (0845 6443553, wwww.viarail.ca).

Stay Hotel 71 (001 418 692 1171, www.hotel71.ca) offers double rooms from £134, room only.

Information 0800 0517055, www.bonjourquebec.co.uk

Read Montreal and Quebec City (Lonely Planet City Guides, £12.99)

LIGHT FANTASTIC

Quebec's year-long 400th anniversary celebrations reach their peak on July 3, the day Samuel de Champlain founded New France in Quebec City in 1608. The highlight of the day is the premiere of the Image Mill, a huge light show on the port's 600m-long grain silos. The production is the work of Robert Lepage, an artist and film-maker who was born in the city. The city's annual summer festival will open on the same day. Concerts, firework displays and exhibitions continue throughout the year (www.quebec400.qc.ca, www.quebecregion.com)

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