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Beyond Tourism
Oxford has been home to nearly a millennium of scholarship—25 British prime ministers and numerous other world leaders have been educated here. In 1167, Henry II founded Britain’s first university, and its distinguished spires have since captured the imaginations of luminaries such as Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis. The city’s legendary scholarship and enthralling architecture also make Oxford a must-see for tourists and a popular place to study abroad. For a true sense of this enclave of academia, avoid the hordes choking Broad St. and roam the alleyways to find ancient bookshops, serene college quads, and, of course, history-laden pubs inviting you to sample their brew.
Oxford’s colleges gather around St. Mary’s Church, which is the spiritual heart of both the university and the greater city. The city’s center is bounded by George Street and connecting Broad Street to the north, and Cornmarket and High Street in the center. To the northwest, the district of Jericho is less touristed and is the unofficial hub of student life.
Book at least a week ahead from June to September, especially for singles. B&Bs (from £25) line the main roads out of town and are reachable by bus or a 15-45min. walk. Try www.stayoxford.com for affordable options. The 300s on Banbury Road, north of town, are accessible by Bus #2, 2A, 2B, and 2D. Cheaper B&Bs lie in the 200s and 300s on Iffley Road (Bus #4, 4A, 4B, 4C, and 16B to Rose Hill) and on Abingdon Road in South Oxford (Bus #16 and 16A). If it’s late, call the Oxford Association of Hotels and Guest Houses (East Oxford ☎721 561, West Oxford ☎862 138, North Oxford ☎244 691, South Oxford ☎244 268).
A bevy of budget options seduce tourists and students fed up with college food. Gloucester Green Market, behind the bus station, abounds with tasty treats. (Open W 8am-3:30pm). The Covered Market, between Market St. and Carfax, has produce and deli goods. (Open M-Sa 8am-5pm). Get groceries at Sainsbury’s, in the Westgate Shopping Centre. (Open M-Sa 7am-8pm, Su 11am-5pm). Across Magdalen Bridge, cheap restaurants along the first four blocks of Cowley Road serve Chinese, Lebanese, Indian, and Polish food in addition to the standard fish ’n’ chips. For a truly on-the-go meal, try a sandwich from the kebab vans, usually found on Broad St., High St., Queen St., and St. Aldates.
The TIC sells a map (£1.25) and the Welcome to Oxford guide (£1), which lists the colleges’ visiting hours. Hours can also be accessed online at www.ox.ac.uk/visitors/colls.shtml. Note that hours can be changed without explanation or notice. Some colleges charge admission, while others are accessible only through blue badge tours, booked at the TIC. Don’t bother trying to sneak into Christ Church outside open hours, even after hiding your backpack and copy of Let’s Go—bouncers, affectionately known as “bulldogs,” in bowler hats and stationed 50 ft. apart, will squint their eyes and kick you out.
The College. “The House” has Oxford’s grandest quad and its most distinguished students, counting 13 past prime ministers among its alumni. Charles I made Christ Church his headquarters for 3 years during the Civil Wars and escaped dressed as a servant when the city was besieged. Lewis Carroll first met Alice, the dean’s daughter, here. The dining hall and Tom Quad serve as shooting locations for Harry Potter films. In June, be respectful of irritable students prepping for exams as you navigate the narrow strip open to tourists.
Through an archway to your left as you face the cathedral lies Peckwater Quad. Look for rowing standings chalked on the walls and for the beautiful exterior of Christ Church’s library—the most elegant Palladian building in Oxford—which is closed to visitors. Spreading east and south from the main entrance, Christ Church Meadow compensates for Oxford’s lack of “backs” (the riverside gardens in Cambridge). The meadows themselves are beautiful and offer great views of Christ Church College if you don’t want to pay to go inside the buildings. (Down St. Aldates from Carfax. ☎286 573; www.chch.ox.ac.uk. Open M-Sa 9am-5:30pm, Su 1-5:30pm; last admission 4pm. Chapel services M-F 6pm; Su 8, 10, 11:15am, and 6pm. £4.70, families £9.40, concessions £3.70.)
Christ Church Chapel. The only church in England to serve as both a cathedral and college chapel, it was founded in AD 730 by Oxford’s patron saint, St. Fridesweide, who built a nunnery here in honor of two miracles: the blinding of her persistent suitor and his subsequent recovery. A stained-glass window (c. 1320) depicts Thomas à Becket kneeling moments before his death in Canterbury Cathedral. Look for the floating toilet in the bottom right of a window showing St. Fridesweide’s death and the White Rabbit fretting in the windows in the hall.
Tom Quad. The site of undergraduate lily-pond dunking, Tom Quad adjoins the chapel grounds. The quad takes its name from Great Tom, the seven-ton bell that has rung 101 (the original number of students) times at 9:05pm (the original undergraduate curfew) every evening since 1682. The bell rings specifically at 9:05pm because, technically, Oxford should be 5min. past Greenwich Mean Time. Christ Church keeps this time within its gates. Nearby, the college hall displays portraits of some of Christ Church’s famous alums—Sir Philip Sidney, William Penn, John Ruskin, John Locke, and a bored-looking W.H. Auden in a corner by the kitchen.
Christ Church Picture Gallery. Generous alumni gifts have established a small but noteworthy collection of works by Tintoretto, Vermeer, and da Vinci, among others. (In the Canterbury quad. Entrances on Oriel Sq. and at Canterbury Gate; visitors to the gallery should enter through Canterbury Gate. ☎276 172. Open Apr.-Sept. M-Sa 10:30am-1pm and 2-5:30pm, Su 2-5pm; Oct.-Mar. M-Sa 10:30am-1pm and 2-4:30pm, Su 2-4:30pm. £2, concessions £1.)
Oxford’s extensive college system (totalling 39 official Colleges of the University) means that there are plenty of beautiful grounds to stroll year-round. The following is a selection of the most popular colleges. For information on others, check one of the many guides found at the TIC.
All Souls College. Candidates who survive the admission exams to All Souls are invited to a dinner, where the dons confirm that they are “well-born, well-bred, and only moderately learned.” All Souls is also reported to have the most heavenly wine cellar in the city. The Great Quad, with its carefully manicured lawn and two spires, may be Oxford’s most serene, as hardly a living soul passes over it. (Corner of High and Catte St. ☎279 379; www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk. Open Sept.-July M-F 2-4pm. Free.)
Balliol College. Students at Balliol preserve tradition by hurling abuse over the wall at their Trinity College rivals. Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Aldous Huxley, and Adam Smith were all sons of Balliol’s mismatched spires. The interior gates of the college bear lingering scorch marks from the executions of 16th-century Protestants, and a mulberry tree planted by Elizabeth I still shades slumbering students. (Broad St. ☎277 777; www.balliol.ox.ac.uk. Open daily 2-5pm. £1, students and children free.)
Magdalen College. With extensive grounds and flower-laced quads, Magdalen (MAUD-lin) is considered Oxford’s handsomest college. The college has a deer park flanked by the river Cherwell and Addison’s Walk, a circular path that touches the river’s opposite bank. Though Dudley Moore attended, the college’s most brilliant wit is alumnus Oscar Wilde. (On High St., near the Cherwell. ☎276 000; www.magd.ox.ac.uk. Open daily Apr.-June 1-6pm; July-Sept. noon-6pm; Oct.-Mar. 1pm-dusk. £3, concessions £2.)
Merton College. Merton’s library houses the first printed Welsh Bible. J. R. R. Tolkien lectured here, inventing the Elven language in his spare time. The college’s 14th-century Mob Quad is Oxford’s oldest and least impressive, but nearby St. Alban’s Quad has some of the university’s best gargoyles. Japanese Crown Prince Narahito lived here during his university days. (Merton St. ☎276 310; www.merton.ox.ac.uk. Open M-F 2-4pm, Sa-Su 10am-4pm. Library tours £2. Free.)
New College. This is the self-proclaimed first real college of Oxford. It was here, in 1379, that William of Wykeham dreamed up an institution that would offer a comprehensive undergraduate education under one roof. The bell tower has gargoyles of the Seven Deadly Sins on one side and the Seven Virtues on the other—all equally grotesque. New College claims Kate Beckinsale and Hugh Grant as two attractive alums. (New College Ln. Use the Holywell St. Gate. ☎279 555; www.new.ox.ac.uk. Open daily from Easter to mid-Oct. 11am-5pm; Nov.-Easter 2-4pm. £2, students and children £1.)
Queen’S College. Though the college dates back to 1341, Queen’s was rebuilt by Wren and Hawksmoor in the 17th and 18th centuries in the distinctive Queen Anne style. A trumpet call summons students to dinner, where a boar’s head graces the table at Christmas. That tradition supposedly commemorates a student who, attacked by a boar on the outskirts of Oxford, choked the animal to death with a volume of Aristotle—probably the nerdiest slaughter ever. (High St. ☎279 120; www.queens.ox.ac.uk. Open to blue badge tours only.)
Trinity College. Founded in 1555, Trinity has a Baroque chapel with a limewood altarpiece, cedar latticework, and cherubim-spotted pediments. The college’s series of eccentric presidents includes Ralph Kettell, who would come to dinner with a pair of scissors to chop anyone’s hair that he deemed too long. (Broad St. ☎279 900; www.trinity.ox.ac.uk. Open M-F 10am-noon and 2-4pm, Sa-Su 2-4pm; during holidays also Sa-Su 10am-noon. £1.50, concessions 75p.)
University College. Built in 1249, this soot-blackened college vies with Merton for the title of oldest, claiming Alfred the Great as its founder. Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled for writing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism but was later immortalized in a prominent monument, on the right as you enter. Bill Clinton spent his Rhodes Scholar days here. (High St. ☎276 602; www.univ.ox.ac.uk. Open to blue badge tours only.)
Ashmolean Museum. The grand Ashmolean, Britain’s finest collection of arts and antiquities outside London and the country’s oldest public museum, opened in 1683. The museum is undergoing extensive renovations until 2009 but continues to show an exhibit of “treasures”—more than 200 artifacts from its galleries—including the lantern carried by Guy Fawkes in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the deerskin mantle of Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. (Beaumont St. ☎278 000. Open Tu-Sa 10am-5pm, Su noon-5pm; in summer open Th until 7pm. Tours £2. Free.)
Bodleian Library. Oxford’s principal reading and research library has over five million books and 50,000 manuscripts. It receives a copy of every book printed in Great Britain. Sir Thomas Bodley endowed the library’s first wing in 1602—the institution has since grown to fill the immense Old Library complex, the Radcliffe Camera next door, and two newer buildings on Broad St. Admission to the reading rooms is by ticket only. The Admissions Office will issue you a two-day pass (£3) if you are able to prove your research requires the use of the library’s books and present a letter of recommendation and ID. No one has ever been permitted to take out a book, not even Cromwell. Well, especially not Cromwell. (Broad St. ☎277 000. Library open in summer M-F 9am-7pm, Sa 9am-1pm, in winter M-F 9am-10pm, Sa 9am-1pm. Tours leave from the Divinity School in the main quad; in summer M-Sa 4 per day, in winter 2 per day, in the afternoon. Audio tours £2. Tours £4.)
Botanic Garden. Plant life has flourished for three centuries in the oldest botanic garden in the British Isles, owned and used by Oxford University. The path connecting the garden to Christ Church Meadow provides a view of the Thames and the cricket grounds on the opposite bank. (At the intersection of High St. and Rose Ln. From Carfax, head down High St. ☎286 690. Open daily May-Sept. 9am-6pm, last admission 5:15pm; Mar.-Apr. and Oct. 9am-5pm, last admission 4:15pm; Nov.-Feb. 9am-4:30pm, last admission 4:15pm. Greenhouses open daily 10am-4pm. Mar.-Sept. £2.70, concessions £2, children free; Nov.-Feb. donation suggested.)
Carfax Tower. The tower marks the center of the pre-modern city. A climb up its 99 (very narrow) spiral stairs affords a superb view from the only remnant of medieval St. Martin’s Church. Carfax gets its name from the French carrefour (crossroads), referring to the intersection of the North, South, East, and West Gates. (Corner of Queen St. and Cornmarket St. ☎792 653. Open daily Apr.-Oct. 10am-5pm; Oct.-Mar. 10am-3:30pm, weather permitting. £1.90, under 16 90p.)
Museum Of Oxford. From hands-on exhibits to a murderer’s skeleton, the museum provides an in-depth look at Oxford’s 800-year history. (St. Aldates. Enter at corner of St. Aldates and Blue Boar St. ☎252 761. Open Tu-F 10am-4:30pm, Sa 10am-5pm, Su noon-4pm. Last admission 30min. before close. £2, children 50p, children under 5 free, families £4, concessions £1.50.)
Oxford Castle. Oxford’s newest attraction, the castle has been an Anglo-Saxon church, a Norman castle commissioned by William the Conqueror, a courthouse, and (until 1996) a prison. Now the complex houses restaurants, an open-air theatre, and a luxury hotel. Visitors are issued personal video tours outlining life as an inmate and the gory details of 17th-century executions. Climb to the top of St. George’s tower for a view of the city formerly enjoyed only by prison guards. (44-46 Oxford Castle on New Rd. ☎293 679, tour bookings 411 414. Open daily 10am-5pm, last tour at 4:20pm. £7.25, children £5.25, concessions £6.)
Sheldonian Theatre. This Roman-style auditorium was designed by a teenage Christopher Wren. Graduation ceremonies, conducted in Latin, take place in the Sheldonian, as does everything from student recitals to world-class opera performances. The Red Violin and Quills, as well as numerous other movies, were filmed here. Climb up to the cupola for an excellent view of Oxford’s scattered quads. ( Broad St. ☎277 299. Open July-Aug. M-Sa 10am-12:30pm and 2-4:30pm, Su 11am-4pm; Jan.-June and Sept.-Dec. M-Sa 10am-12:30pm and 2-3:30pm. Occasionally closed for university ceremonies. £2, concessions £1. Purchase tickets for shows from Oxford Playhouse, ☎305 305. Box office open M-Tu and Th-Sa 9:30am-6:30pm or until 30min. before last show, W 10am-6:30pm. Shows £15.)
Best Of The Rest. At The Oxford Story, 6 Broad St., a slow-moving but informative ride hauls visitors through dioramas that chronicle Oxford’s past. (☎728 822. Open July-Aug. daily 9:30am-5pm; Sept.-June M-Sa 10am-4:30pm, Su 11am-4:30pm. 45min. ride. £7.25, students and seniors £6, children £5.25.) Oxford’s oldest building, a Saxon tower built in 1040, stands as part of St. Michael at the North Gate. Climb the steps for a brief history of the tower and the church as well as a birds-eye view of the city. (☎240 940. Open daily Apr.-Oct. 10:30am-5pm; Nov.-Mar. 10:30am-4pm. £1.80, concessions £1.20.) With 6 mi. of bookshelves, Blackwell’s bookstore, 53 Broad St., is by far the largest bookshop in Oxford and is famous for letting patrons read undisturbed. (☎792 792. Open M and W-Sa 9am-6pm, Tu 9:30am-6pm, Su 11am-5pm.)
Behind the University Museum of Natural History, the Pitt-Rivers Museum has an eclectic archaeological and anthropological collection, including shrunken heads, rare butterflies, and magical amulets. (☎270 927; www.prm.ox.ac.uk. Open daily noon-4:30pm. Free.) The Museum of the History of Science features clocks, astrolabes, and Einstein’s blackboard, preserved as he left it after an Oxford lecture in the 1930s. (Broad St., ☎277 280. Open Tu-Sa noon-4pm, Su 2-5pm. Tours £1.50. Free.) The Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St., hosts international shows. (☎722 733. Tu-Sa 10am-5pm, Su noon-5pm. Free.)
In Oxford, pubs far outnumber colleges—some even consider them the city’s prime attraction. Most open by noon, begin to fill around 5pm, and close at 11pm (10:30pm on Su). Recent legislation has allowed pubs to stay open later, but there may be conditions, including an earlier door-closing time or a small cover charge. Be ready to pub crawl—many pubs are so small that a single band of celebrating students will squeeze out other patrons, while just around the corner others will have several spacious rooms.
After Happy hour at the pubs, head up Walton Street or down Cowley Road for late-night drinking.
Check This Month in Oxford, free at the TIC, or Daily Information, posted all over town and online (www.dailyinfo.co.uk), for event listings.
Music. Centuries of tradition give Oxford a solid music scene. Colleges offer concerts and Evensong services; New College has an excellent boys’ choir. Performances at the Holywell Music Rooms, on Holywell St., are worth checking out; Oxford Coffee Concerts feature famous musicians and ensembles every Sunday at 11:15am. (☎305 305. Tickets £9.) The City of Oxford Orchestra, a professional symphony orchestra, plays a subscription series at the Sheldonian and in college chapels during the summer. (☎744 457. Tickets £16-18.) The New Theatre, George St., features performances from jazz to musicals to the Welsh National Opera. (☎320 760. Tickets £10-50. Student, senior, and child discounts available.) With a large student population and its proximity to Manchester and London, Oxford is on an excellent circuit for smaller bands at clubs and large venues.
Theatre. The Oxford Playhouse, 11-12 Beaumont St., hosts amateur and professional musicians and dance performances. The playhouse also sells discounted tickets for venues city-wide. (☎305 305; www.oxfordplayhouse.com. Box office open M-Tu and Th-F 9:30am-6:30pm, W 10am-6:30pm.) College theatre groups often stage productions in gardens or cloisters.
Festivals. The university celebrates Eights Week at the end of May, when the colleges enter crews in bumping races and beautiful people sip Pimm’s on the banks. In early September, St. Giles Fair invades one of Oxford’s main streets with an old-fashioned English fun fair. Daybreak on May Day (May 1) cues one of Oxford’s most inspiring moments: the Magdalen College Choir sings madrigals from the top of the tower beginning at 6am, and the town indulges in Morris dancing, beating the bounds, and other age-old rituals of merry men. Pubs open at 7am.
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For 52 years, we have published the world’s favorite budget travel guides, written entirely by students and updated every year. With pen and notebook in hand and a few changes of underwear stuffed in our backpacks, we spend months roaming the globe in search of travel bargains.
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