Oxford, the city of dreaming spires

Oxford is the "city of dreaming spires", as the poet Matthew Arnold called it: a tangle of medieval colleges, silent quadrangles, libraries and domes of golden stone that for more than nine centuries has been home to the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Dozens of prime ministers, Nobel laureates, kings and queens studied here, as did writers such as Oscar Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, and here Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and one of the first mass Covid vaccines were born. But Oxford is not just an open-air museum: it is a living city of about 160,000 people, young and cosmopolitan, with markets, historic pubs, riverside meadows and a car industry that still builds the Mini. An hour by train from London, it is one of England's best-loved day trips, but it deserves at least one night.

Oxford at a glance

Oxford stands at the confluence of the Thames, which here is called the Isis, and the Cherwell, in the county of Oxfordshire, about 90 kilometres north-west of London. The name literally means "ford of the oxen", and the ox on the ford still appears in the city's coat of arms. The city has about 160,000 inhabitants, almost a quarter of them students at its two universities: the University of Oxford and the younger Oxford Brookes. It is also one of the most expensive places in the UK for housing, with one of the highest ratios of house prices to earnings in the country.

For centuries city life has been shaped by the sometimes tense relationship between the university (gown) and the townspeople (town): in 1355 a tavern brawl escalated into the St Scholastica Day riot, which left dozens of students dead.

How the university works

The University of Oxford has no precise founding date: teaching was already taking place in 1096 and grew rapidly after 1167, when King Henry II barred English students from attending the University of Paris. Today it is a federation of some forty self-governing colleges and halls, each with its own buildings, chapel, dining hall, endowment and traditions. Students live and study in their college, where they attend tutorials, one-to-one or very small group sessions with a tutor, the heart of the Oxford method, while the university organises lectures, exams and laboratories and awards degrees.

The oldest colleges are University College, Balliol and Merton, from the 13th century; among the most famous are Christ Church, founded by Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, Magdalen, with its deer park, New College, which is "new" only in name, dating from 1379, and All Souls, which has no students, only fellows. Among the quirkiest traditions are exams sat in dark academic dress, sub fusc, with a carnation in the buttonhole whose colour changes according to the exam, and May Morning on 1 May, when at dawn Magdalen's choir sings from the top of the tower before thousands of people.

A factory of leaders

Oxford has educated a huge share of Britain's and the world's ruling class: nearly thirty UK prime ministers, from William Gladstone to Margaret Thatcher, from Tony Blair to David Cameron and Boris Johnson, studied here, along with many foreign heads of state and government, from India's Indira Gandhi to America's Bill Clinton. A decisive training ground has been the Oxford Union, the debating society founded in 1823, where students argue political motions and where guests such as Malcolm X, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama have spoken. The weight of Oxford and Cambridge, together known as Oxbridge, in recruiting the elite has long been at the centre of the debate on social inequality in the country.

The history of Oxford

Oxford began in Anglo-Saxon times as a settlement around a priory dedicated to St Frideswide, the city's patron saint. The Normans built a castle in 1071, of which St George's Tower survives, and in the Middle Ages it became an important wool-trading centre. The university turned it into a city of clerics and scholars, and in the 16th century it was the stage for the religious conflicts of the Reformation: in 1555 and 1556 the Protestant bishops Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were burned at the stake in Broad Street under the Catholic Queen Mary I; the Martyrs' Memorial commemorates them. During the 17th-century Civil War Oxford was King Charles I's capital.

In the 20th century the city was transformed by industry: in 1913 William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, began making cars at Cowley, on the eastern edge, and Oxford became a working-class city as well as a university one. The former Morris, later British Leyland, works now build the Mini for BMW. In 2020 university researchers developed with AstraZeneca one of the first Covid-19 vaccines, distributed in billions of doses worldwide.

What to see in Oxford

The heart of the university

• The Radcliffe Camera: the circular building with its great dome, built in 1749 as a science library, is the symbol of the city. Today it is a Bodleian reading room and can be seen from outside or on guided tours.
• The Bodleian Library: one of the oldest libraries in Europe, opened in 1602, which by law receives a copy of every book published in the UK. Guided tours show the Divinity School, a 15th-century Gothic hall with a spectacular star vault, and Duke Humfrey's Library, the oldest reading room. The nearby Weston Library holds free exhibitions of its treasures.
• The Sheldonian Theatre: designed by a young Christopher Wren in 1669, it hosts graduation ceremonies and concerts; the cupola offers a fine view.
• The Bridge of Sighs: it doesn't really resemble the Venetian one, but Hertford College's covered bridge of 1914 is one of the most photographed spots in the city.
• The University Church of St Mary the Virgin: its tower gives perhaps the best view of the spires and the Radcliffe Camera.

Colleges to visit

Many colleges can be visited for a fee at limited times, mostly in the afternoon, and close during exams. Christ Church is the largest and most visited: its chapel is also the diocese's cathedral, one of the smallest in England, and its dining hall, the Great Hall, inspired Hogwarts' hall in the Harry Potter films, while the staircase appears in the films themselves. Here Charles Dodgson taught mathematics and, as Lewis Carroll, wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for Alice Liddell, the dean's daughter. Magdalen charms with its cloisters, deer park and Addison's Walk along the Cherwell; New College preserves a long stretch of the medieval city walls; Merton has one of the oldest libraries still in use.

Museums

• Ashmolean Museum: founded in 1683, Britain's oldest public museum. Its collections, free to visit, range from ancient Egypt and Greece to Raphael and Michelangelo, Turner and Picasso, and include Guy Fawkes's lantern and the "Messiah" Stradivarius violin.
• Museum of Natural History: a neo-Gothic iron and glass building with dinosaur skeletons and the famous remains of the dodo that inspired Lewis Carroll; here in 1860 the celebrated debate on evolution between Thomas Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce took place.
• Pitt Rivers Museum, entered through the Museum of Natural History: an extraordinary ethnographic and archaeological collection, with more than half a million objects packed into Victorian cases.
• History of Science Museum, with the blackboard Einstein used during a lecture in Oxford in 1931.

Walks, markets and the river

The Covered Market, opened in 1774, has butchers, bakeries, cafés and shops. Carfax Tower, at the crossroads of the four main streets, can be climbed for a view of the city. The Jericho district, to the north-west, is full of cafés and restaurants; Port Meadow, a vast common along the Thames where horses and cattle graze, is perfect for a walk to the riverside pubs. In summer you cannot leave Oxford without trying punting, gliding along the river in a flat-bottomed boat pushed with a long pole, hired at Magdalen Bridge or the Cherwell Boathouse.

Literary Oxford

Oxford is one of the capitals of English literature. Here J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, both dons, met their friends in the Inklings at the Eagle and Child pub on St Giles to read their manuscripts, including The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis Carroll set Alice's world here, Philip Pullman his His Dark Materials trilogy, and Colin Dexter the cases of Inspector Morse, hero of much-loved TV series filmed among the colleges. Blackwell's bookshop on Broad Street, opened in 1879, has an underground room, the Norrington Room, considered one of the largest book-selling rooms in the world. Oxford is also home to Oxford University Press, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Eating and drinking

Oxford has a good range of international restaurants, especially along multi-ethnic, student-filled Cowley Road and in Jericho. Historic pubs are an attraction in themselves: the Turf Tavern, hidden in an alley behind the walls, the Bear Inn, one of the oldest in the city, with a collection of ties on the walls, and riverside pubs such as the Trout Inn at Wolvercote and the Perch at Binsey. For tea with scones, cream and jam there are tea rooms in the centre and the Grand Café, which bills itself as the site of England's first coffee house, opened in 1650.

Living in Oxford

Oxford has a strong economy based on the university, the city's largest employer, the teaching hospitals, publishing, biotechnology and university spin-off companies, and the Mini plant. Wages are above the national average, but housing costs are extremely high, among the highest in the UK outside London, and many workers live in nearby towns. Traffic is a chronic problem: the city has introduced low-traffic zones and filters to cut car use in residential areas. For the wider picture see living in the UK, schools and universities and housing and rents.

Practical information

• By train: from London Paddington in about an hour, with frequent departures, or from Marylebone. The centre is a ten-minute walk from the station.
• By coach: the Oxford Tube and X90 coaches run day and night from central London; there are also direct coaches from Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
• Getting around: the centre is small and best explored on foot or by bike, as students do; driving is not advisable, and it is better to use the Park & Ride car parks on the outskirts.
• When to go: spring and early summer are the loveliest seasons; between late May and mid-June some colleges close for exams.

Day trips

• Blenheim Palace at Woodstock, one of England's largest country houses and a UNESCO site, where Winston Churchill was born; he is buried in the nearby village of Bladon.
• The Cotswolds, with honey-coloured stone villages such as Burford, Bibury and Chipping Campden.
• Windsor Castle and the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, both easily reached in a day.
• London and Cambridge, the eternal rival, which Oxford races every spring in the famous Boat Race on the Thames.

See also Cambridge, day trips from London, schools and universities in the UK, Isaac Newton and British cities.

Oxford on the map

Nearby