Things to see and do in Oxford
The landmarks, colleges, museums, river and places to eat that our walks pass, with what your guide would tell you about each. Read, pick, then find the tour that takes you there.
A city that rewards a closer look
Oxford packs eight centuries of learning, building and argument into a centre you can walk across in twenty minutes. The catch is that much of it sits behind college gates, down unmarked lanes and inside buildings that keep their own hours.
Exploring with a guide turns that around. You see the quads and libraries that are open on the day, hear why they look the way they do, and find the pubs, cafés and shops that locals actually use. Start with the places below, then pick the walk that takes you there.
- 39colleges, each with its own quads, chapel and stories
- 1683the Ashmolean opens as Britain’s first public museum
- 1 mileacross the centre, easily walked in a morning
Things we can arrange
Here are some of the things we can arrange and build into your Oxford experience.
See Oxford
Colleges (Balliol, Trinity, New), architecture, the university and its history.
Experience Oxford
Punting, gardens, museums, theatre, music and food.
Go behind the scenes
Specialist access and unusual experiences: the Library, the Sheldonian, BMW, Christ Church and Worcester.
Follow an interest
Harry Potter, Morse, literature, politics and more.
Combine these to create your own Oxford day
Doors we can open for you
These are things we regularly arrange. Colleges and sites sometimes close for events or university timetables, so we can’t promise a particular one on every date. If your first choice isn’t available, we’ll usually suggest another college or experience in its place.
Photo: Godot13, CC BY-SA 4.0Worcester College
Medieval cottages down one side of the main quad and an eighteenth-century range on the other, then 26 acres of gardens with a lake fed from the Oxford Canal. One of the quietest corners of central Oxford.
Sheldonian Theatre
Christopher Wren's first building, finished in 1669 and still the University's ceremonial hall. Climb to the cupola for the best rooftop view on Broad Street.
Christ Church
The grandest college and the only one whose chapel is a cathedral. The Great Hall inspired the Hogwarts dining hall, and the staircase beneath it is the one every film crew wants.
BMW Plant Oxford & the Mini line
The Cowley works where every Mini is built, paired with the story of how car-making shaped modern Oxford: the city beyond the colleges.
Photo: Julian Herzog, CC BY 4.0Magdalen College
Pronounced Maudlin. The tower that sings on May Morning, a deer park inside the walls, and Addison's Walk, where Tolkien argued C.S. Lewis into belief one night in 1931.
Photo: Jps3, CC BY-SA 4.0New College
Founded in 1379 and the first college built around a quad, which every other college then copied. The cloister is where Malfoy was turned into a ferret.
Photo: Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0Trinity College
The college with the long lawns and the wrought-iron gates on Broad Street that, by tradition, open only for a visiting monarch. Its chapel was the first in Oxford built in the classical style.
Photo: Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0Balliol College
One of three claimants to the title of oldest college, and the one with the most prime ministers. The door scorched by the martyrs' fire now hangs in the passage between the quads.
Choose a pin to see the place
Blue pins are the places our walks visit, gold pins are where we meet you, and white pins are the stations and Park and Ride sites. Beyond Oxford adds the day trips.
Use two fingers to move or zoom the map.
Radcliffe Camera
James Gibbs's domed library of 1749 is the building everyone photographs, and still a working reading room. The square around it is where every walk pauses.
- The dome, and the doctor whose fortune paid for it
- All Souls and Brasenose through their gates
- The tunnel that links it to the Bodleian
Bodleian Library & Divinity School
One of the oldest libraries in Europe. The Divinity School's fan-vaulted ceiling of 1488 is the finest room in Oxford and stood in for the Hogwarts infirmary.
- The Divinity School's fan vaulting
- Old Schools Quad and the Tower of the Five Orders
- Duke Humfrey's Library, where opening allows
Sheldonian Theatre
Christopher Wren's first building, finished in 1669 and still the University's ceremonial hall. Climb to the cupola for the best rooftop view on Broad Street.
- The painted ceiling by Robert Streater
- The Emperors' Heads along the railings
- The cupola, on open days
Bridge of Sighs
Hertford College's bridge of 1914 over New College Lane, the one on the postcards and the one Morse walked under most. The alley beside it leads to the Turf Tavern.
- What the bridge is actually for
- New College Lane and Halley's house
- St Helen's Passage to the Turf
University Church of St Mary
The University's church since the thirteenth century. Its tower looks straight down on the Radcliffe Camera, and its porch of 1637 is the most Baroque thing in the city.
- The tower: 127 steps to the view
- The twisted columns of the porch
- Cranmer's trial and the cut pillar
Carfax Tower
All that is left of St Martin's church, at the crossroads the city grew from. Ninety-nine steps to a view along the High Street, and the quarter boys strike every fifteen minutes.
- The quarter boys and the clock
- The view along the High to Magdalen
- Why nothing in the centre is built higher
Martyrs’ Memorial
George Gilbert Scott's memorial of 1843 to Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, burned at the stake nearby in 1555. Our usual meeting point, with the Ashmolean behind you.
- The three bishops and their story
- The cross in Broad Street where it happened
- St Giles and its two Inklings pubs
Christ Church
The grandest college and the only one whose chapel is a cathedral. The Great Hall inspired the Hogwarts dining hall, and the staircase beneath it is the one every film crew wants.
- Tom Quad and Wren's Tom Tower
- The Great Hall and the staircase
- The cathedral and Christ Church Meadow
Magdalen College
Pronounced Maudlin. The tower that sings on May Morning, a deer park inside the walls, and Addison's Walk, where Tolkien argued C.S. Lewis into belief one night in 1931.
- The cloister and the fifteenth-century tower
- The deer park and Addison's Walk
- The bridge and the punts below
New College
Founded in 1379 and the first college built around a quad, which every other college then copied. The cloister is where Malfoy was turned into a ferret.
- The cloister from the films
- The medieval city wall in the garden
- The chapel and Epstein's Lazarus
Balliol College
One of three claimants to the title of oldest college, and the one with the most prime ministers. The door scorched by the martyrs' fire now hangs in the passage between the quads.
- The scorched door of 1555
- Front quad and Butterfield's chapel
- Its long list of prime ministers
Trinity College
The college with the long lawns and the wrought-iron gates on Broad Street that, by tradition, open only for a visiting monarch. Its chapel was the first in Oxford built in the classical style.
- The chapel and its limewood carving
- The lawns and the lime walk
- The gates that never open
All Souls College
No undergraduates, only Fellows, chosen by an exam once called the hardest in the world. Hawksmoor's twin towers face the Radcliffe Camera, and Wren's sundial hides in the quad.
- Hawksmoor's Gothic towers
- The Codrington Library
- The mallard hunt, once a century
Ashmolean Museum
Open since 1683 and rebuilt for this century. Egyptian mummies, the Alfred Jewel, Turner and Uccello, and a rooftop restaurant with the spires behind it.
- The Alfred Jewel
- The Egyptian galleries
- The rooftop terrace
Pitt Rivers Museum
Half a million objects arranged by type rather than by place, in Victorian cases with handwritten labels. Children love it, and so do anthropologists.
- Drawers you are allowed to open
- The totem pole
- Cases of masks, amulets and boats
Museum of Natural History
A Victorian glass-and-iron hall full of dinosaur skeletons, the Oxford dodo, and the room where Huxley and Wilberforce argued about evolution in 1860.
- The dodo, the last soft tissue of its kind
- The T. rex and the iguanodon
- The carved columns, one for each rock type
History of Science Museum
The world's oldest purpose-built museum building, from 1683, now full of astrolabes, early microscopes and the blackboard Einstein chalked in Oxford in 1931.
- Einstein's blackboard
- The astrolabe collection
- Early penicillin apparatus from the Dunn School
Weston Library
The Bodleian's modern wing across Broad Street, with free exhibitions drawn from its treasures: Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio, Tolkien's own drawings.
- The Treasures gallery
- Blackwell Hall and its café
- Changing exhibitions through the year
Modern Art Oxford
The city's contemporary gallery in a former brewery on Pembroke Street, with changing exhibitions and a courtyard café two minutes from Christ Church.
- Changing exhibitions
- The yard café
- Pembroke Street's quiet end
The Story Museum
Narnia's wardrobe, a whispering wood and a small theatre, all in a converted telephone exchange on Pembroke Street. Built for children who like being read to.
- The Enchanted Library
- The Whispering Wood
- Storytelling sessions and the theatre
Magdalen Bridge Boathouse
Hire a punt below Magdalen Tower and drift past the deer park and the Botanic Garden, or take a chauffeured punt and let someone else find the current.
- Self-hire and chauffeured punts
- Magdalen Tower from the water
- The Botanic Garden bank and the Cherwell
Cherwell Boathouse
Punts on the upper Cherwell, north of the University Parks, with a restaurant on the bank that is worth the walk on its own. Fewer crowds than the bridge.
- Punts on the quiet stretch
- Lunch on the terrace
- The walk up through the Parks
Salters Steamers
River cruises from Folly Bridge on the Thames, from a short round trip to a full day downstream past the college boathouses to Abingdon.
- Folly Bridge departures
- Iffley Lock and the boathouses
- Longer trips towards Abingdon
Port Meadow
Ancient common land on the Thames where horses and cattle wander free, twenty minutes' walk from the centre, with the Perch and the Trout waiting at the far end.
- The walk to Binsey and the Perch
- Sunsets over the water
- The Trout at Wolvercote, Morse's pub
The Grand Café
On the site of England's first coffee house of 1650, now gilded, mirrored and marbled, and the place we send people for afternoon tea when the walk is done.
- Afternoon tea after the walk
- The 1650 claim and the plaque
- Champagne at the bar on the High
Queen’s Lane Coffee House
Across the High from the Grand and with its own claim to being the oldest coffee house in Europe, serving since 1654. Less gilt, more breakfast.
- Breakfast and brunch all day
- Turkish coffee, as in 1654
- Tables looking onto the High
Quod
The Old Bank Hotel's brasserie on the High, with modern art on the walls, a terrace garden at the back and a bar that stays busy long after the colleges close.
- The terrace garden
- The art collection
- Cocktails before dinner
Vaults & Garden
An organic café in the fourteenth-century congregation house of the University Church, with tables in the garden facing the Radcliffe Camera. The best lunch view in Oxford.
- Tables facing the Camera
- Soups, salads and cakes
- The vaulted room inside
The Turf Tavern
Down St Helen's Passage off New College Lane, against the medieval city wall: Morse's local, the pub where Bill Clinton did not inhale, and the one every student finds first.
- The city wall in the beer garden
- The plaque for Bob Hawke's yard of ale
- Braziers and mulled wine in winter
The Lamb & Flag
Across St Giles from the Eagle and Child, where Tolkien and Lewis moved their Tuesday meetings in 1962. Closed in 2021 and reopened by a community group the year after.
- The back room the Inklings used
- Real ale, no music
- St John's College next door, which owns it
The Covered Market
Butchers with game hanging outside, cake decorators, a cobbler, a coffee roaster and the cookie shop with the queue, all a minute from the High Street.
- Ben's Cookies and the Cake Shop
- The butchers and fishmongers
- Where your guide eats lunch
Blackwell’s
A modest shopfront on Broad Street that opens downstairs into the Norrington Room, once the largest single room selling books anywhere in the world.
- The Norrington Room
- The Oxford and Inklings shelves
- The café upstairs, facing the Sheldonian
Alice’s Shop
Where the real Alice Liddell bought her barley sugar, drawn by Tenniel as the shop with the knitting sheep in Through the Looking-Glass. Opposite Christ Church.
- The shop from the book
- Alice souvenirs and editions
- Christ Church across the road
Gloucester Green Market
The open-air market beside the coach station: world street food from Wednesday to Saturday, antiques and collectables on Thursdays.
- Street food from dozens of kitchens
- Thursday antiques
- Next to Gloucester Green coach station
Oxford Castle & Prison
A Norman mound, a Saxon tower and a prison that closed only in 1996, now restaurants around a courtyard and a costumed tour of the cells.
- St George's Tower and the mound
- The prison tour
- Restaurants around the yard
Blenheim Palace
Vanbrugh's Baroque palace at Woodstock, given to the Duke of Marlborough by a grateful nation, with Capability Brown's park and the room where Churchill was born.
- The State Rooms and the Long Library
- The Churchill exhibition
- Brown's lake and the Column of Victory
The Cotswolds
Burford, Bibury, Stow and Bourton: the villages that made the Cotswolds famous, an hour west, with a guide who knows which ones to skip at the weekend.
- Burford's high street
- Bibury's Arlington Row
- Lunch in a village pub
Stratford-upon-Avon
The Birthplace, Anne Hathaway's Cottage and Holy Trinity church, an hour north of Oxford, with a Blue Badge guide qualified for the area.
- Shakespeare's Birthplace
- Holy Trinity and the grave
- The RSC theatres by the Avon
Bath & Stonehenge
The Roman Baths and the Royal Crescent, ninety minutes south-west, with Stonehenge on the way back if the light and the day allow.
- The Roman Baths
- The Royal Crescent and the Circus
- Stonehenge at the end of the day
Worcester College
Medieval cottages down one side of the main quad and an eighteenth-century range on the other, then 26 acres of gardens with a lake fed from the Oxford Canal. One of the quietest corners of central Oxford.
- The chapel and hall on the college’s own trail
Museum of Oxford
The story of the city itself rather than the University, told through the people who have lived and worked here, inside the Victorian Town Hall on St Aldate’s.
- The story of the city rather than the University
- Inside the Victorian Town Hall
- Free days through the year
Oxford Illusion Museum
Optical illusions, tilted rooms and puzzles to try for yourself, opposite the Covered Market. A good hour with children, or on a wet afternoon.
- Optical illusions you can step into
- Puzzles and hands-on exhibits
- Opposite the Covered Market
Westgate
The city’s big shopping centre, opened in 2017, with more than a hundred shops, a cinema and a rooftop terrace that looks straight across the spires.
- More than a hundred shops
- A rooftop terrace looking across the spires
- Restaurants and a cinema
Bodleian Library Shop
Books, stationery and gifts drawn from the Bodleian’s own collections, in the Weston Library on Broad Street, with a café in the same hall.
- Books and gifts from the Bodleian’s collections
- Inside the Weston Library
- A café in the same hall
Scriptum
A fine stationer’s on Turl Street full of leather journals, dip pens, quills, sealing wax and Venetian masks. Easy to lose half an hour in.
- Leather journals and dip pens
- Quills and sealing wax
- Venetian masks
Routes to London
Trains run to London Paddington and London Marylebone in about an hour. The Oxford Tube coach runs round the clock to Victoria, and The Airline links Oxford with Heathrow and Gatwick.
- Trains to Paddington and Marylebone
- The Oxford Tube to Victoria, day and night
- The Airline to Heathrow and Gatwick
Every place on the map, up close
The landmarks, colleges, museums, river, places to eat and shops our walks pass, with what your guide would tell you about each. Browse them all or narrow it down.
Ready to walk it with a guide?
Pick a date and tell us what caught your eye. Every walk is private and drawn around what interests you.