Browse Masterworks at Madrona Gallery

Seven galleries, an 1889 mansion, twenty thousand works, and a Japanese garden with a real Shinto shrine waiting out back.

A genuine 1908 castle with free Italian, Japanese and rose gardens, peacocks, and a film resume that includes Professor X's mansion.

More than 85 hand-built dioramas inside the Empress, featuring one of the world's largest model railways and zero self-consciousness.

Where Fort Victoria stood in the 1840s, now there are heritage brick, café patios, and an artisan market.

Oak Bay's grown-up art dealer since 1974, free to browse, and an excellent excuse to develop opinions about things you cannot afford.

Free entry, experimental art, and a real shot at encountering something you've never seen before, up a Fort Street staircase since 1972.

Eighty-plus years of volunteer theatre in a 175-seat Rockland coach house, plus a gallery, a bar, and absolutely no parking.

Victoria's first board-game café, eight dollars buys you all night, a game guru, paninis, milkshakes, and at least one minor dispute.

Victoria's 162-seat black box runs touring theatre, dance and spoken word, and becomes three Fringe shows in one night every summer.

A 90-minute guided walk through Canada's oldest Chinatown, with earpieces, a local guide, and gambling dens you never knew existed.

Thirty to forty-five minutes of model ships, BC coast history, and genuinely enthusiastic staff at Nootka Court, for very little money.

Rated one of North America's best British antique strips, and it costs nothing to lose an afternoon in it.

A 225-seat restored 1940s movie palace doing Chekhov like it's urgent, which it turns out, it is.

A 1909 bank vault of a bookshop on Government Street, on every world's-best-bookshop list, and it costs nothing to wander.