Fine Art Stroll at Winchester Galleries

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

Hold a tarantula at this tiny downtown menagerie of 50 species and discover exactly how brave your date actually is.

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.

One of Canada's largest university art collections, free to walk through, in a calm room on Yates Street.

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

Seventy-six acres of rare Garry oak meadow in Oak Bay, with unsigned paths, April camas and flat rocks at the water.

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

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.

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