Lunenburg

Lunenburg is a small fishing town in Nova Scotia that was established in 1753. Its Old Town is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. UNESCO considers the site the best example of planned British colonial settlement in North America, as it retains its original layout and appearance of the 1800s, including local wooden vernacular architecture.

Understand
The Mi'kmaq lived in a territory from the present site of Lunenburg to Mahone Bay. As many as 300 inhabited the site in the warm summer months. French colonists, who became known as Acadians, settled in the area around the 1620s.

The town was founded in 1753 as one of the first British attempts to settle Protestants in Nova Scotia. Its economy has been based on the offshore fishery, and today Lunenburg is the site of Canada's largest secondary fish-processing plant. The town flourished in the late 1800s, and much of the historic architecture dates from that period.

Tourist information

 * Lunenburg tourism information

By car
From Halifax, get on Highway 102 North (Bayers Rd.), then take Exit 1A toward Highway 3/Highway 333/Peggy's Cove/South Shore/Yarmouth. Merge onto Highway 103 West, then get off at Exit 11 (Highway 324.) Turn left on the 324 (Cornwall Rd.) for Lunenburg. For a longer, more scenic drive, take the Lighthouse Route (Highway 3), which goes along the coast and directly through Lunenburg.

From Yarmouth, take Highway 103 E to Exit 11.

By bus

 * Its route between Halifax and Lunenburg includes stops in Chester and Bridgewater. Travel time to Lunenberg from Halifax is 1 hr 45 min and from Chester is 50 minutes.

Get around
There is no public transportation in Lunenburg, but it is small enough to be explored on foot. Trot in Time, outside the Fisheries Museum, gives tours of the town in horse-drawn buggies from May to October. Lunenburg Town Walking Tours run by local historian, Eric Croft, provide a look at the town's history as you walk through it.