Fan Tan Alley: Victoria Travel Guide (4.5★)

Brick close enough to touch

At its pinch point, Fan Tan Alley is narrower than most hallways. Old brick walls rise on both sides, and in places they stand barely an arm’s span apart. Shop doors open straight onto the paving stones. Look up and you get a thin strip of sky between the rooflines.

It runs between Fisgard Street and Pandora Avenue in Victoria’s Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in Canada. The alley is often described as the country’s narrowest commercial street. Because it is so short and so easy to miss from the main road, plenty of visitors to the Inner Harbour never find it.

From fan-tan tables to shopfronts

The name comes from fan-tan, a Chinese gambling game. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the passage and the courtyards off it held gambling rooms, along with opium dens that were legal in Canada until 1908. The narrow, twisting layout made it easy to disappear into.

Those days are long gone. Today the doorways hold small independent businesses, and the alley sits inside Victoria’s Chinatown, which was designated a National Historic Site of Canada. Most of the fabric you see is the original brick, and that’s the real draw: you’re walking a street plan that has barely changed in over a century.

Walking it end to end

Starting at the Fisgard Street end puts you in the middle of Chinatown before you go in. Go in at the 2 Fan Tan Alley address and keep walking. The passage doesn’t run in one straight line. It narrows, widens slightly at small openings and bends before it lets you out near Pandora Avenue.

What to look for on the way:

• The narrowest squeeze, where two people have to turn sideways to pass
• Shopfront windows set right into the brick, worth slowing down for
• Side openings and small courtyards, reminders of how the old buildings connected
• The rooflines above, where the old upper-storey brickwork is easiest to read

Squeezing through politely

The alley is one person wide in places, so it has an unspoken traffic rule. When someone is coming the other way, the person nearer a wider spot steps in and waits. A quick nod sorts it out. Don’t stop dead at the tightest point for a photo when people are queued behind you.

Some more habits that help:

• Take your photos at either entrance, looking in. The long, narrow view works better from there anyway.
• Wear backpacks on your front or carry them by hand. Wide bags block the whole passage.
• Strollers and wheelchairs can find the narrowest point and the uneven paving difficult. Check the width from the Fisgard end before you commit.
• The shops are small businesses, not a museum. Browse as you would any shop, and ask before photographing inside one.

What’s around the alley

Fan Tan Alley is best seen as one stop on a short Chinatown walk. On Fisgard Street, look for the Gate of Harmonious Interest, the ornate gateway that marks the entrance to the district. The block is lined with grocers, bakeries and restaurants, so a snack before or after fits in easily.

Come out the Pandora end and you’re a short walk from Market Square. It’s a restored heritage complex of shops and restaurants around an open courtyard. From there, Lower Johnson Street’s boutiques and the waterfront are a few minutes’ stroll. The Inner Harbour and the Parliament Buildings are roughly 10–15 minutes south on foot along Government Street.

Timing your visit

The listed hours are 8am–8pm Monday, Tuesday and Thursday through Sunday. On Wednesdays it opens later, at 10am. These hours are what Google shows this week and may change with the season, so check before planning an early or late visit. Individual shops keep their own hours inside that window.

You don’t need long here. Ten minutes covers a there-and-back walk, and half an hour lets you browse properly. Mid-morning, after the shops open, is a good bet: everything is open and the day-trippers from the harbour haven’t filled Chinatown yet. Downtown Victoria is compact enough to fold this into any walking day without a car. City buses running along Douglas Street stop a couple of blocks away.