England's Fenland University City — punting on the Backs, King's College Chapel's fan vault, Newton's apple tree, and 121 Nobel Prize winners educated in a single medieval city
Cambridge is the home of the University of Cambridge, one of the two great English universities, whose riverside colleges form the most beautiful concentration of medieval and Tudor architecture in England. The Backs — the green spaces behind the colleges along the River Cam — are among the most photographed scenes in Britain, seen from a punt pole on the river with King's College Chapel rising above the willows. King's College Chapel (1446–1515) has the largest fan vault in the world; its Christmas Eve 'Nine Lessons and Carols' service, broadcast globally, is the most famous Christmas servic…
Scholars arrived in Cambridge in 1209 after fleeing Oxford following a dispute between townspeople and students that resulted in the hanging of two students. The University of Cambridge was formally constituted by royal charter in 1231. Peterhouse, the oldest college, was founded in 1284. The medieval town grew around the river crossing (the 'bridge over the Cam'), and by the 15th century the colleges' riverside meadows (The Backs) were being developed. Cambridge was central to the Protestant Reformation in England — Erasmus taught Greek here, Cranmer studied here, and the 'Cambridge Reformer…