Cambridge

Punts glide beneath the Bridge of Sighs and past the Wren Library while students cycle the cobbles in gowns, and the whole performance has repeated itself with minor variations since the 13th century. Cambridge in Cambridgeshire is a university city where genius is the baseline and the river is the stage.

Cambridge University, founded in 1209, comprises 31 colleges, many of which open their courtyards and chapels to visitors. King's College Chapel, completed in 1515, contains the largest fan-vaulted ceiling in the world and Rubens' Adoration of the Magi above the altar. The Backs — the lawns running from the colleges down to the River Cam — provide the most photographed academic landscape in England. Punting on the Cam from the Mill Pond to Grantchester passes through water meadows that Rupert Brooke immortalised. The Fitzwilliam Museum, free to enter, holds collections that rival any outside London — Egyptian antiquities, Impressionist paintings, and medieval manuscripts. Fitzbillies bakery, selling Chelsea buns since 1922, is the city's most beloved institution after the university itself. The Cambridge Science Park, founded by Trinity College in 1970, anchors the technology corridor that has made Cambridge one of Europe's most innovative cities.