Cambridge, the city of colleges

Cambridge is, together with its rival Oxford, the most famous university city in the world. Over eight centuries its colleges have educated Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking, and in its laboratories the electron and the structure of DNA were discovered. Yet Cambridge remains a city on a human scale, flat and green, where people get around by bike, glide along the River Cam in flat-bottomed boats pushed with a pole, listen to choirs in Gothic chapels and take tea in the orchards of Grantchester. Around the historic city has grown the technology hub known as Silicon Fen, one of the most important in Europe. Less than an hour by train from London, Cambridge is one of England's best-loved destinations.

Cambridge at a glance

The city has about 150,000 inhabitants, more than a fifth of them students, and stands on the banks of the River Cam, on the edge of the Fens, in Cambridgeshire. It is one of the driest areas of Britain, with little rain and warm summers. The University of Cambridge, founded in 1209, is the second oldest in the English-speaking world and comprises 31 colleges, each with its own buildings, courts, chapels and traditions, as well as shared faculties, laboratories and museums. The city is also home to Anglia Ruskin University. People affiliated with the university have received more than a hundred Nobel Prizes, more than almost any other institution in the world.

The history of Cambridge

Romans, Saxons and merchants

The Romans already had a small fort on Castle Hill, where a road crossed the river. In Anglo-Saxon and Norman times the town, then called Grantebrycge, the bridge over the Granta, was a river port and a market for the Fenland countryside. Of medieval Cambridge before the university there remains the Round Church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built around 1130 on the model of the church in Jerusalem.

The birth of the university

In 1209 a group of scholars left Oxford after violent clashes with the townspeople and settled in Cambridge. In 1284 the Bishop of Ely founded Peterhouse, the first college. In the following centuries the great royal colleges were founded: King's College, established in 1441 by Henry VI, and Trinity College, founded by Henry VIII in 1546. During the Reformation Cambridge was a hotbed of Protestant ideas, and many of its scholars, such as Thomas Cranmer, played leading roles in the birth of the Anglican Church. In the 17th century Isaac Newton studied and taught here, and in the 18th century the mathematics examinations, the Tripos, became the most feared in England.

The city of science

In the 19th century Charles Darwin studied at Christ's College, and in 1874 the Cavendish Laboratory was founded, where in 1897 J. J. Thomson discovered the electron and in 1932 Cockcroft and Walton achieved the first artificial splitting of the atomic nucleus. On 28 February 1953 Francis Crick and James Watson, drawing also on Rosalind Franklin's X-ray images, walked into The Eagle pub announcing that they had discovered the "secret of life", the double helix of DNA. Alan Turing, the father of computer science, was also educated at King's College. Women could study at Cambridge from 1869, with the founding of Girton College, but only received full degrees in 1948. In 1970 Trinity College created the Cambridge Science Park, the first in the country, from which today's technology cluster grew.

What to see in Cambridge

King's College Chapel

King's College Chapel, built between 1446 and 1515, is one of the masterpieces of English Perpendicular Gothic and the symbol of the city. Inside, the extraordinary stone fan vault, the largest in the world, seems like lace suspended above the 16th-century stained glass, which tells stories from the Bible. Behind the altar hangs Rubens's Adoration of the Magi. The chapel choir is famous worldwide: every Christmas Eve the service of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast by the BBC since 1928, is heard by millions. During term you can attend choral evensong free of charge.

The colleges

Many colleges can be visited, some free, others with a ticket, respecting opening times and exam periods. At Trinity College, the largest and richest, you can admire Great Court, one of the largest enclosed courts in Europe, and the Wren Library, designed by Christopher Wren, which holds Newton's manuscripts and A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh notebook. St John's College is famous for its neo-Gothic Bridge of Sighs of 1831, reminiscent of the one in Venice. At Queens' College the curious wooden Mathematical Bridge, of 1749, is linked to the false legend that Newton built it without nails. Outside Corpus Christi College stands the Corpus Clock, a golden clock without hands topped by an unsettling mechanical grasshopper that "devours" time.

The Backs and punting

The Backs are the lawns and gardens stretching behind the colleges along the river, with the finest views of the city, especially in spring, when the crocuses and daffodils bloom. The best way to admire them is punting: you hire a flat-bottomed boat and push it with a long pole, or leave it to a student who acts as punter and guide. In an hour you pass beneath the college bridges, from Magdalene Bridge to Silver Street Bridge. The more adventurous head upriver to Grantchester, the village beloved of the poet Rupert Brooke, where the Orchard Tea Garden has served tea and scones under the apple trees since 1897.

Museums

The Fitzwilliam Museum, in a grand neoclassical building, is one of the most important museums in Europe for its size, with Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, illuminated manuscripts and paintings by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet and Picasso, and admission is free. Kettle's Yard is a house-museum devoted to modern art, while the Polar Museum tells the story of the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton, and the Museum of Zoology displays a fin whale skeleton suspended in its entrance. The university's Botanic Garden, opened in 1846, is a peaceful oasis a few minutes from the station.

The centre

In the centre, Market Square hosts a daily market, and from the tower of Great St Mary's church there is a view over the college roofs. King's Parade, Trinity Street and Bridge Street link the main colleges, while Mill Road, east of the station, is the multicultural street of independent shops and restaurants.

University life and traditions

The academic year is divided into three short, intense terms. At the end of exams in June comes May Week, which despite its name takes place in June, with the May Balls, black-tie balls that last until dawn. Every spring the crews of Cambridge and Oxford race on the Thames in London in the Boat Race, a contest held since 1829. Among the more curious traditions are formal dinners in gowns, ancient graduation ceremonies in Latin and rules forbidding anyone but the fellows to walk on the college lawns.

Eating and drinking

Cambridge has historic pubs steeped in the city's history: The Eagle, with its ceiling covered in signatures left by Second World War airmen and the plaque recalling the DNA announcement, the Pickerel Inn, one of the oldest, and riverside pubs such as The Anchor and The Mill. The Fitzbillies bakery, opened in 1920, is famous for its sticky Chelsea buns. Mill Road and the area around Regent Street offer food from all over the world, and in summer people picnic on Jesus Green and Midsummer Common.

Events

As well as May Week, July brings the Cambridge Folk Festival, one of the oldest folk music festivals in Europe, founded in 1965. In summer the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival brings Shakespeare's plays to college gardens, and in June the Strawberry Fair livens up Midsummer Common. In autumn there are film and science festivals, and in December the Christmas market and choir concerts in the chapels.

Living in Cambridge

Cambridge is one of the richest and most dynamic cities in the United Kingdom, thanks to the university and the thousands of technology and biomedical companies of Silicon Fen, from the chip designer ARM, founded here in 1990, to the large pharmaceutical laboratories of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, home to AstraZeneca. This success comes at a price, however: houses are among the most expensive in the country outside London, traffic is heavy and the city struggles to grow without losing its character. It is Britain's cycling capital, with one of the highest shares of journeys by bike in Europe, and it has a guided busway on a dedicated track linking the city to nearby towns.

Practical information

• Getting there: the nearest airport is Stansted, about 35 minutes away by train, with flights from many European cities. From London you arrive by train from King's Cross in about 50 minutes or from Liverpool Street in just over an hour.
• Getting around: the centre is small and pedestrian-friendly; the bicycle is the ideal way to get about, and the station is about a 20-minute walk from the centre.
• College visits: check opening times on each college's website; they often close during exams, from May to mid-June.
• When to go: in spring for the flowers on the Backs, in summer for punting, in December for the Christmas choirs.

Day trips

• Ely: a quarter of an hour away by train, its cathedral, called "the ship of the Fens" because it can be seen for miles above the flatlands, is one of the most beautiful in England, with an extraordinary octagonal lantern tower.
• Duxford: the aviation site of the Imperial War Museum, the largest aviation museum in Europe, with Spitfires, Concorde and bombers.
• Anglesey Abbey and Wimpole Estate: two great National Trust houses, with gardens, parkland and a farm.
• Lavenham and Saffron Walden: two of the best-preserved medieval villages in England, with colourful timber-framed houses.
• Newmarket: the capital of horse racing, with the National Horseracing Museum.

See also Oxford, British cities and schools and universities in the UK.

Cambridge on the map

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