The title of today's entry is a bit misleading, although I just tried to be fancy. I prepared before I came here so I read the book of Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited. I do not know that the nostalgia after the decaying English nobility really showed me a lot about Oxford. Although, I get to know a lot about the student life in the 1920's which was not that different from today. So I came here knowing that Sebastian Flyte was wreaking drunken havoc in the Old Quad - or something like that. We live on Iffley Rd, about a twenty-minute walk from the city centre, in a nice area. Until now I was walking up and down in the city but there are still a lot colleges and churches to discover. But I have to start somewhere so I will start at the Radcliffe Camera.
John Radcliffe (1652-1714) became Doctor of Medicine in Oxford, then he went to London, where he became soon the physician of William III. His property became a Trust after his death, and it was spent on a number of Oxford facilities like the Radcliffe Camera, which is a "chamber" for a library devoted to the sciences (above). The building is the first example of a circular library in England. It was built in the Neo-Palladian style, which is the very English Baroque architecture.
Another building erected from the Radcliffe Trust is the Radcliffe Observatory. It is a bit north of the city center, at present besides a big excavation and archaeological site. It is a copy of the antique building of the Tower of the Winds in Athens - as it was my first impression.
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