Magdalen College ☆☆

The cloister (Photo by Ed Webster)
The cloister
The cloister, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Ed Webster)
The "New Building" (built 1733) of Magdalen College by a channel of the Cherwell River, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by slack12)
The Dining Hall has early 16th-century linenfold panelling and a set of ornate early Renaissance carvings, five of which depict the life of Mary Magadalene., Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Roel Wijnants)
A parade of beasts on the cloisters, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Charles D P Miller)
A pathway at Magdalen College, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Adrian Scottow)
The chapel choir, where Daniel Purcell (Henry's cousin) was once organ master, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Juan Salmoral)
Magdalen College, Oxford. On the bottom right St John's Quad can be seen., Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Random Guy 3)
A panorama showing the cloisters in the foreground and the New Hall in the background, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Oliver Woodford)
Addison's Walk, the pathway through the Water Meadows just east of the college, Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo by Adrian Scottow)

A gorgeous 15C campus by the waters of the Cherwell River

Perhaps the prettiest Oxford campus, Magdalen College is a 15th-century gem surrounded by a park overlooking the Cherwell River, its square, pinnacled Great Tower (built 1492–1509) dominating the Oxford skyline.

The college was started in 1458, built around a core of buildings that once belonged to the Hospital of St. John.

The parts of the college that are usually open to the public include the medieval Hall, where students take their meals, the Old Kitchen Bar, where visitors can eat (it's the oldest part of the college, converted form a 14C kitchen), and the Chapel, home to a famous men's and boy's choir that has existed since the college's founding.

Also don/t miss a stroll along Addison's Walk, the lovely, tree-lined pathway through the Water Meadows, a triangular parkland just east of the college surrounded on all three sides by branches of the Cherwell River.

Famous Madgalen alumni

Magdalen has matriculated the likes of historian Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall the the Roman Empire), adventurer and soldier T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII. 

Writers C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, and Julian Barnes all studied here, as did actor Dudley Moore (who studied music here on an organ scholarship) and director Terrence Malick.

Magdalen College has been the school of kings (Edward VIII of England, Jigme Wangchuck of Bhutan) and prime ministers (Malcolm Fraser of Australia and John Turner of Canada).

Magdalen was the Oxford college where many Nobel laureates first studied their trade, including Lord Professor Howard Florey (who helped discover penicillin), poet Seamus Heaney, and Dr. Erwin Schrödinger (who won for atomic theory, not for sealing theoretical cats in boxes).

Several notable Americans also studied here, including the future Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter, plus General Wesley Clark.