Edmonton is the capital city of Alberta and sits further north than Moscow — a fact that shapes everything about it, from the design of its buildings to the particular intensity of its summer festival season. It is a city of about one million people, built on both banks of a deep river valley, with a cultural life that repeatedly surprises visitors who arrive expecting a resource industry town and nothing more.
The North Saskatchewan River Valley is the city's defining feature — North America's largest urban park system, a continuous ribbon of trails and ravines cutting through the middle of the city. Above it, the downtown cultural quarter clusters around Churchill Square: the Royal Alberta Museum (the largest in western Canada), the Art Gallery of Alberta in its dramatic stainless steel building, and the Winspear Centre concert hall. South of the river, the Alberta Legislature Building occupies the original site of Fort Edmonton, and Fort Edmonton Park nearby recreates the city's history across four historical eras.
Edmonton is known internationally for its summer festivals — the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival in August is the second-largest fringe in the world after Edinburgh, and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival draws an audience that camps on a hillside above the river valley for four days. The city has a deeply embedded culture of outdoor events that runs from May through September as compensation for the winters.
West Edmonton Mall is impossible to ignore — for two decades it was the largest mall in the world, and it contains an amusement park, a water park, an ice rink, and a replica of Columbus's Santa Maria alongside the 800 shops. Sports anchor the rest of the city's identity: the Edmonton Oilers, whose four Stanley Cup championships in the 1980s under Wayne Gretzky define the city's sporting mythology, play at Rogers Place in the Ice District.
Old Strathcona — the neighbourhood south of the river along Whyte Avenue — is where the independent restaurants, cafés, bars, and live music venues concentrate. It is the most animated part of the city on an ordinary evening, and becomes extraordinary during Fringe.