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Oxford University isn’t one easily identifiable campus, but a sprawling mixture of 38 colleges scattered around the city center, each with its own distinctive identity and focus. Oxford students live and study at their own college, and also use the centralized resources of the overarching university. The individual colleges are deeply competitive. Most of the grounds and magnificent dining halls and chapels are open to visitors, though the opening times (displayed at the entrance gates) vary greatly.
The city center of Oxford is bordered by High Street, St. Giles, and Longwall Street. Most of Oxford University's most famous buildings are within this area. Jericho, the neighborhood where many students live, is west of St. Giles, just outside the city center. Its narrow streets are lined with lovely cottages. The area north of the center around Banbury and Marston Ferry roads is called Summertown, and the area east of the center, along St. Clement's Street, is known as St. Clement's.
Founded in 1458, with a handsome main quadrangle and a supremely monastic air, Magdalen (pronounced maud-lin) is one of the most impressive of Oxford's colleges and attracts its most artistic students. Alumni include such diverse people as P. G. Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, and John Betjeman. The school's large, square tower is a famous local landmark. To enhance your visit, take a stroll around the Deer Park and along Addison's Walk.
More than half a million intriguing archaeological and anthropological items from around the globe, based on the collection bequeathed by Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers in 1884, are crammed into a multitude of glass cases and drawers. In an eccentric touch that's surprisingly thought-provoking, labels are handwritten and items are organized thematically rather than geographically—a novel way to gain perspective. Give yourself plenty of time to wander through the displays of shrunken heads, Hawaiian feather cloaks, and fearsome masks. Grab coffee from the van usually parked on the grass out front.
A vast library, the domed Radcliffe Camera, usually surrounded by tourists with cameras trained at its golden-stone walls, is Oxford's most spectacular building, constructed in 1737–49 by James Gibbs in Italian baroque style. It contains part of the Bodleian Library's enormous collection, begun in 1602 and one of six "copyright libraries" in the United Kingdom. Like the Library of Congress in the United States, this means it must by law contain a copy of every book printed in Great Britain. In addition, the Bodleian is a vast repository for priceless historical documents—including a Gutenberg Bible and a Shakespeare First Folio. The collection continues to grow by more than 5,000 items a week.
Guided tours—three to six of them daily except when private events are being held—reveal the magnificent Duke Humfrey's Library, which was the original chained library, completed in 1488 (the ancient tomes are dusted once a decade) as well as the spots used to create Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films. Standard tours can be prebooked, as can the extended tours on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Otherwise, arrive early to secure first-come-first-served tour tickets. Audio tours don't require reservations.
Passing through Carfax, the center of Oxford and where four roads meet, you can spot this tower. It's all that remains of St. Martin's Church, where Shakespeare stood as godfather for William Davenant, who himself became a playwright. Every 15 minutes, little mechanical "quarter boys" mark the passage of time on the tower front. Climb up the 99 steps of the dark stairwell for a good view of the town center.
Built in 1546, the college of Christ Church is referred to by its members as "The House." This is the site of Oxford's largest quadrangle, Tom Quad, named after the huge bell (6¼ tons) that hangs in the Sir Christopher Wren–designed gate tower and rings 101 times at 9:05 every evening in honor of the original number of Christ Church scholars. The vaulted, 800-year-old chapel in one corner has been Oxford's cathedral since the time of Henry VIII.
The college's medieval dining hall contains portraits of many famous alumni, including 13 of Britain's prime ministers, but you'll recognize it from its recurring role in the Harry Potter movies (although they didn't actually film here, the room was painstakingly re-created in a studio). Plan carefully, as the dining hall is often closed between noon and 2 during term time. Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, was a teacher of mathematics here for many years; a shop opposite the meadows on St. Aldate's sells Alice paraphernalia. The college also moonlights as a B&B in summer, renting vacant student dorms to the public at around £60 a night.
The Ashmolean, the world's oldest public museum, was originally housed in this 1683 building, which now holds scientific and mathematical instruments, from astrolabes to quadrants. Among the gems are a wonderful collection of 18th- and 19th-century models of the solar system and the chalkboard Einstein used in a lecture on the Theory of Relativity. There are guided tours on Thursday (2:30 and 3:15) and Saturday (12:30 and 1:15).
Founded in 1621 as a healing garden, this is the oldest of its kind in the British Isles. Set on the river, the University of Oxford's diverse garden displays 6,000 species ranging from lilies to citrus trees. There are a spacious walled garden, six luxuriant glass houses, including insectivorous and lily houses, and interesting medicinal, rock, and bog gardens to explore. Picnics are allowed, but you must bring your own food and drinks, as there's nowhere to buy them inside.
This highly decorative Victorian Gothic creation of cast iron and glass, more a cathedral than a museum, is worth a visit for its architecture alone. Among the eclectic collections of entomology, geology, mineralogy, and zoology are the towering skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex and casts of a dodo's foot and head. There's plenty for children to explore and touch.
The attractive campus of St. John's has seven quiet quadrangles surrounded by elaborately carved buildings. You enter the first through a low wooden door. This college dates to 1555, when Sir Thomas White, a merchant, founded it. His heart is buried in the chapel (it's a tradition for students to curse as they walk over it). The Canterbury Quad represented the first example of Italian Renaissance architecture in Oxford, and the Front Quad includes the buildings of the old St. Bernard's Monastery. The public are welcome to use the gardens on afternoons.
Stretching up into the foothills of the Berkshire Downs between Swindon and Oxford is a wide fertile plain known as the Vale of the White Horse. Here, off B4507, cut into the turf of the hillside to expose the underlying chalk, is the 374-foot-long, 110-foot-high figure of a white horse (known as the the Uffington White Horse), an important prehistoric site. Some historians believed that the figure might have been carved to commemorate King Alfred's victory over the Danes in 871, whereas others date it to the Iron Age, around 750 BC. More current research suggests that it’s at least 1,000 years older, created at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Uffington Castle, above the horse, is a prehistoric fort. English Heritage maintains these sites. To reach the Vale of the White Horse from Oxford (about 20 miles), follow A420, then B4508 to the village of Uffington.
