Quebec City Quebec City Quebec City (pronounced or ; ; , Abenaki language: Kephek), officially Québec, is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. The city had a population estimate of 531,902 in July 2016 (an increase of 3.0% from 2011), and the metropolitan area had a population of 800,296 in July 2016 (an increase of 4.3% from 2011), making it the second largest city in Quebec after Montreal, and the seventh largest metropolitan area and eleventh largest city in the country. Until the early 19th century it was the metropolis of present-day Canada, after which it was surpassed by
History of the city religious system was clearly expansive and significant, details of its political and economic functioning remain matters of speculation. In the remnants of the Roman Empire, cities of late antiquity at first gained independence, but lost their population and their importance, starting in Roman Britain and Germania. The locus of power in the West shifted to Constantinople and to the ascendant Islamic civilization with its major cities Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba. From the 9th through the end of the 12th century, Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, with a population approaching 1 million.