Travel to United Kingdom: Oxford

Snapshots from a stroll on a cold, pre-Christmas morning.

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The 13th century Carfax Tower--the name supposedly a corruption of "four corners," a reference to the intersection here of Cornmarket Street to the north, High Street to the east, St. Aldates Street to the south, and Queen Street to the west. The tower is a relic of St. Martin's Church, demolished in 1896.

Looking northeasterly from the top of Carfax Tower. The dome belongs to the Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library; the spire (from 1300) sits atop a library today, but the building was formerly the university church, St. Mary the Virgin's.

The view, to the southeast, of the golden weather-ox atop the Town Hall (1893-7).

Streetside: entrance to the same building.

The Town Hall once contained Oxford's public library. Hence the Baconian inscription.

South from the town hall and just past Blue Boar Street: Tom Tower, at the entrance to Christ Church's quadrangle. The top is by Wren (1682).

Not especially beautiful, but evocative anyway: a window at St. Michael at the North Gate.

On the verge of Christmas feasts.

For the less adventurous.

Another choice.