First I went to the Bodleian Library, and Charles Stuart (I) went there to hideout before the civil war. A sat on his throne. The same one, and then I felt skinny, which rocked. However, more importantly the Divinity School which is also part of the Library, was the first of Oxford University's examination rooms but it is also the movie set of Harry freakin Potter. They use two locations in the library (the Divinity School is the Hogwarts Hospital wing, and the actual upstairs part of the library is the Restricted Section). Can I just say that this information made my life! I saw some really old ass books too.
Then I went to the Church of the St. Virgin Mary and climbed 126 stairs to the top tower and looked over all of Oxford..it was epic and the church was so nice. Go Catholics (although it was obviously later reformed by the Protestants). I also went to the Sheldonian Theatre, which is where every Oxford convocation is held (from all 38 colleges, oh yeah Oxford University is made up of all the colleges and they are spread all over the city it is very cool).The way the system works is that in every college there are a small number of students who specialize in a field (like 5 history and 3 physics students or whatever, all the faculties), but all the history students would go to lecture in the history building, but the college is like their identity/residence (but yeah everyone in all the colleges gets a Oxford University degree and I wish i had one haha). So this Sheldonian theatre was built by the famous architect Christopher Wren in the 17th century ( it is called the Sheldonian because it is named after the chancellor of the university of the time, Gilbert Sheldon). Love the history..love it! So again I climbed 90 stairs and looked at Oxford from the top, and it was still awesome!
I also went to the Oxford Museum of the History of Science, which was nice because I just took a history of science course, which sucked because of the prof but the subject is interesting. I saw a piece of Einstein's blackboard, from a lecture he gave in Oxford in 1931, with his original writing from his theory of relativity. They also had one of the first Roman sundials, and so many Islamic ones and other tools. I saw so many collective tools, telescopes, and models of astronomy from the Royal Society. Like crazy models of the Ptolemaic system compared to the Copernicus one (pretty awesome). I am such a nerd.
Oxford Castle was the last thing I had time for but it was wicked. It was constructed originally, historians think by the Saxons, and made of stone as a defense tower (which makes it super unique because the Saxons traditionally made everything out of wood, but they made Churches out of stone. However, no one can find any evidence of it originally being apart of a church, so historians believe it is the only Saxon defense tower made of stone! (sooo cool eh!). I climbed 109 stairs to the top of the tower, and my legs were dying at this point but it was still very worth it. Anyway, around the 1070s a man (officer of some sort who was a close friend of William the freakin Conqueror) added to the tower walls and interior making it a castle. The castle was used for defense up until the 13th century when it became a prison for naughty Oxford students or so they say. But by the 16th century it was actually used as a high security prison in Oxford and some really cool Catholic and Protestant martyrs were imprisoned there. The tour had really neat stories. It was also built beside a hill, which is now called hangman's hill obviously because people were hanged there. It also had a basement where Oxford lectures would be held, which seems really weird but the entire city is so academic so I guess not that out of the ordinary. Anyway, one of the most famous people who spoke there was Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was the first person to write down the stories of Merlin, King Arthur and the Knights Templar. He often spread the stories in the basement which is called St. George's Crypt and it freaked me out a little bit.
The entire day was like history heaven. I love my life. That's all for now folks.
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