Parliament Hill

Parliament Hill Colline du Parlement
Parliament Hill, 2009
Location	Ottawa River / Wellington Street, Downtown Ottawa
Coordinates	45°25′29″N 75°41′58″W / 45.42472°N 75.69944°W / 45.42472; -75.69944 (Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada)
Built	1859–1876
Built for	Legislature of the Province of Canada, Parliament of Canada
Architect	Calvert Vaux, Marshall Wood (landscapes) Thomas Scott (oversight)
Visitors	3 million annually
Governing body	National Capital Commission
National Historic Site of Canada
Official name	Grounds of the Parliament Buildings National Historic Site of Canada
Designated	1976

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.

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.