Grand Pré National Historic Site

Top choice in Annapolis Valley

This interpretive center explains the historical context for the deportation of the French-Acadian people from Acadian, Mi'kmaw and British perspectives, and traces the many routes Acadians took from, and back to, the Maritimes. Beside the center, a serene park contains gardens, an Acadian-style stone church, and a bust of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who chronicled the Acadian saga in Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, and a statue of his fictional Evangeline, now a romantic symbol of her people.

In 2012 the landscapes of this area became a Unesco World Heritage site. Beyond the park you can see the farmland created when the Acadians built dikes along the shoreline, as they had done in northwestern France for generations. There are 12 sq km below sea level here, protected by just over 9km of dikes.