• Dining
And Drinking in Cambridge
• Entertainment
• On
The River
• Arrival,
Information And Getting Around
• Listings
• College
Admission Charges And Opening Times
• Explore
Cambridge
On the whole, CAMBRIDGE
is a much quieter and more secluded place than Oxford, though for the visitor what really
sets it apart from its scholarly rival is "the Backs"
- the green swathe of land that straddles the languid River Cam,
providing exquisite views over the backs of the old colleges.
At the front, the handsome facades of these same colleges dominate
the layout of the town centre, lining up along the main streets.
Most of the older colleges date back to the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries and are designed to a similar plan
with the main gate leading through to a series of "courts",
typically a carefully manicured slab of lawn surrounded on all
four sides by college residences or offices. Many of the buildings
are extraordinarily beautiful, but the most famous is King's College , whose magnificent King's College
Chapel is one of the great statements of late Gothic architecture.
There are thirty-one university colleges in total, each an independent,
self-governing body, proud of its achievements and attracting
- for the most part at least - a close loyalty from its students,
amongst whom privately educated boys remain hopelessly over-represented
despite decades of perfectly adequate state education.
Tradition has it that Cambridge
was founded in the late 1220s by scholastic refugees from Oxford,
who fled the town after one of their number was lynched by hostile
townsfolk - though the first proper college wasn't founded until
1271. Rivalry has existed between the two institutions ever since
- epitomized by the annual Boat Race on the River Thames - while
internal tensions between "town and gown" have inevitably
plagued a place where the university has long tended to control
local life.
During the nineteenth century,
the university finally lost its ancient privileges over the town,
which was expanding rapidly thanks to the arrival of the railway.
The university expanded too, with the number of students increasing
dramatically following the broadening of the curriculum to include
new subjects such as natural science and history. More recently,
change has been much slower in coming to the university, particularly
when it comes to equality of the sexes . The first two women's
colleges were founded in the 1870s, but it was only in 1947 that
women were actually awarded degrees and one or two colleges held
out against accepting women students until the 1980s. In the
meantime, the city and university had been acquiring a reputation
as a high-tech centre of excellence, what locals refer to half-seriously
as "Silicon Fen". Cambridge has always been in the
vanguard of scientific research - its alumni have garnered no
less than ninety Nobel prizes - and it has now become a major
international player in the lucrative electronic communications
industry.
Cambridge is an extremely
compact place, and you can walk round the centre, visiting the
most interesting colleges, in an afternoon. A more thorough exploration,
covering more of the colleges, a visit to the fine art of the
Fitzwilliam
Museum and a leisurely
afternoon on a punt , will however take at least a couple of
days - maybe more. If possible you should avoid coming in high
summer, when the students are replaced by hordes of sightseers
and posses of foreign-language students, though you can still
miss the crowds by getting up early - the tourists only start
to appear in numbers from around 10.30am. Faced with such crowds,
the more popular colleges have restricted their opening times
and several have introduced admission charges. Bear in mind,
too, that during the exam period (late April to early June),
most colleges close their doors to the public at least some of
the time.
Cambridge's main shopping
street is Bridge Street, which becomes Sidney Street, St Andrew's
Street and finally Regent Street; the other main thoroughfare
is the procession of St John's Street, Trinity Street, King's
Parade and Trumpington Street. The university developed on the
land west of this latter route along the banks of the Cam, and
now forms a continuous half-mile parade of colleges from Magdalene
to Peterhouse, with sundry others scattered about the periphery.
The Fitzwilliam Museum , with easily the city's finest art collection,
is just along Trumpington Street south of Peterhouse. The account
below starts with King's College, whose chapel is the university's
most celebrated attraction, and covers the rest of the town in
a broadly clockwise direction.
OTHER POPULAR
DESTINATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
ENGLAND
CHANNEL ISLANDS
GUERNSEY
JERSEY