On the summit of the rocky height, a number of large and somewhat imposing public buildings, grouped irregularly together, with the well-built private dwellings of the wealthier inhabitants, formed the upper town. The lofty spires of no less than nine large ecclesiastical edifices arose within this comparatively limited space. There were the bishop's palace, the courts of judicature, and the house of the Knights Hospitallers, the latter built of stone, extensive, handsome, and adorned with two stately pavilions. There, also, in a commanding situation, stood the Jesuits' college and their church, which was almost magnificent in the interior decorations. The governor's palace, however, erected in 1639, was the proudest ornament of the colonial capital. Southwest of the Upper Town, on the crest of the headland, was the citadel, a large, imperfectly quadrangular fort, with flanking defenses at each corner, only protected, however, by a wall on the inner side. Further on, a large work of great design, but not yet finished, crowned the height of Cape Diamond:[150] from the northern angle of this work, an irregular line of bastioned defenses ran across the whole promontory to the River St. Charles. Some rude and imperfect field-works, with redoubts, strengthened the front toward the Plains of Abraham. The Lower Town covered the beach of the Great River under the cliffs of the promontory: the dwellings, stores, and offices of the merchants, many of them handsome and solid, filled up this narrow space. The only edifice of note, however, was the church of Nôtre Dame de Victoire, built to commemorate Phipps's defeat in 1690. The defense of this part of the city was a large platform battery on the most salient point of the shore, placed scarcely above the level of the waters. The access from the Lower to the Upper Town was steep, narrow, and difficult, and protected by flanking loop-holed walls. There was also a considerable suburb called St. Roch's, on the side of the River St. Charles, where dwelt the chief part of the laboring population, in irregular streets of mean and temporary houses. A large portion of the now valuable space was unoccupied, and here and there the rocky hill side remained as nature had made it. A few of the primeval forest trees still ornamented the gardens and terraces of the city, and clothed the neighboring cliffs. In the wide plain lying by the banks of the River St. Charles, many handsome country houses and pleasant seats, with well-cultivated gardens and rich orchards, met the eye, and, on the slopes beyond, the trim villages of Charlesburg, Lorette, and Beauport; the distant mountain range, with its forest covering, formed, as now, the background of the broad and beautiful picture.