Sights in Oxfordshire
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Museum of the History of Science
Science, art, celebrity and nostalgia come together at this fascinating museum where the exhibits include everything from a blackboard used by Einstein to the world’s finest collection of historic scientific instruments, all housed in a beautiful 17th-century building.
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Carfax Tower
Oxford’s central landmark, towering over what has been a crossroads for 1000 years, is the sole reminder of medieval St Martin’s Church and offers good views over the city centre.
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Trinity College
Trinity College, one of the smallest colleges in terms of enrolment, was founded in 1555.
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University Botanic Gardens
Established in 1631, the University Botanic Gardens are Britain’s oldest.
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Oxford Brookes
Oxford's lesser-known university.
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Christ Church Cathedral
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Christ Church
The largest of all of Oxford’s colleges, and the one with the grandest quad, Christ Church is also its most popular. The magnificent buildings, illustrious history and latter-day fame as a location for the Harry Potter films have tourists coming in droves.
Woe betide you should you display your outsider status by referring to Christ Church as Christ Church College. It’s simply Christ Church. Full stop. The Queen’s College is not to be confused with Queens’ College in Cambridge, and High St and Broad St are referred to as ‘the High’ and ‘the Broad’, respectively.
The college was founded in 1524 by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who suppressed the monastery existing…
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Bridge of Sighs
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Radcliffe Camera
The Radcliffe Camera is the quintessential Oxford landmark and one of the city’s most photographed buildings. The spectacular circular library/reading room, filled with natural light, was built between 1737 and 1749 in grand Palladian style, and has Britain’s third-largest dome. In case you’re wondering: no, you cannot enter disguised as a student; the only way to see the inside the building is to join one of the extended tours of the Bodleian Library, which will no longer explore the underground tunnels and passages leading to the library’s vast book stacks, as these are to be sealed in 2012 with the rebuilding of the New Bodleian Library. Tours take place on…
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University Museum
Oxford has some excellent (free) museums, among them the University Museum of Natural History, famous for its dinosaur and dodo skeletons, and the attached (and incomparable) Pitt Rivers Museum, an Aladdin’s cave spread over three floors and crammed with such things as voodoo dolls and shrunken heads from the Caribbean and Pacific. Visitors are given torches (flashlights) to ‘explore’ the lower Court Gallery and are allowed to open all the drawers. Great stuff.
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Oxford University Press Museum
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Oxfordshire Museum
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Botanic Garden
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University & Pitt Rivers Museums
Housed in a glorious Victorian Gothic building with slender, cast-iron columns, ornate capitals and a soaring glass roof, the University Museum is worth a visit for its architecture alone. However, the real draw is the mammoth natural-history collection of more than five million exhibits, ranging from exotic insects and fossils to a towering T. Rex skeleton and the remains of the first ever dinosaur ever to be mentioned in a written text (1677).
Hidden away through a door at the back of the main exhibition hall, the wonderful Pitt Rivers Museum is an anthropologist’s wet dream – a treasure trove of objects from around the world to satisfy any armchair adventurer and a…
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Trinity College
This small 16th-century college is worth a visit to see its exquisitely carved chapel, one of the most beautiful in the city, and the lovely garden quad designed by Sir Christopher Wren. An Oxford legend says that the back gates of Trinity will only be opened for a ruler from the previous Stuart dynasty. Not surprisingly, the visitor will find them welded shut.
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St Edmund Hall
St Edmund Hall (‘Teddy Hall’ to its residents) is the sole survivor of the original medieval halls, the teaching institutions that preceded colleges in Oxford. The Mohawk chief Oronhyatekha studied here in 1862 (and eloped with the principal’s daughter) but it is best known for its small chapel decorated by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.
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River & Rowing Museum
Life in Henley has always focused on the river, and this impressive museum takes a look at the town's relationship with the Thames, the history of rowing, and the wildlife and commerce supported by the river. Hands-on activities and interactive displays make it a good spot for children, and the Wind in the Willows exhibition brings Kenneth Grahame's stories of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad to life.
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Oxford Union
Oxford’s legendary members’ society is famous for its feisty debates, heavyweight international speakers (as well as odder guests, such as Kermit the Frog) and Pre-Raphaelite murals. Although most of the building is off-limits to nonmembers, you can visit the library to see the murals, which were painted between 1857 and 1859 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The murals depict scenes from the Arthurian legends but are very difficult to see on bright days as they surround the windows.
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Oxford Covered Market
A haven of traditional butchers, fishmongers, cobblers, barbers, delis, little eateries and independent shops, this is the place to go for Sicilian sausage, handmade chocolates, traditional pies, funky T-shirts and wacky hats for weddings and/or the Ascot. If you’re in Oxford at Christmas, it’s a must for its traditional displays of freshly hung deer, wild boar, ostrich and turkey. Otherwise, it’s a good spot for lunch.
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Exeter College
Exeter is known for its elaborate 17th-century dining hall and ornate Victorian Gothic chapel housing The Adoration of the Magi, a William Morris tapestry.
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Brasenose College
Small and select, this elegant 16th-century place is named after a ‘brass nose’, or a brass door-knocker, to be precise. The door-knocker in question resides above the high table in the dining hall and is very well travelled: in 1533, it made it all the way to Stamford, Lincolnshire, only to be returned in 1890 along with the house to which it was attached at the time.
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