The Best Sight in Oxford, The Thames Valley

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Toby Orton

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.

The Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera

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 In addition, the Bodleian is a vast repository for priceless historical documents—including a Gutenberg Bible and a Shakespeare First Folio.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.

Library Family
Radcliffe Sq., Oxford, OX1 3BG, England
01865-277094
www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Sight Details
From £10

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