The Radcliffe Camera & Bodleian Library: The Restricted Archives
Why is it significant?
Stand right here in the center of cobbled Radcliffe Square and look up at that glorious circular rotunda crowned by a soaring lead dome: the Radcliffe Camera.
Key Facts
| Place | The Radcliffe Camera & Bodleian Library: The Restricted Archives |
|---|---|
| Address | Radcliffe Square, Oxford OX1 3BG |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.75340, -1.25400 |
| Part of Walk | Oxford Legends: Hogwarts Cloisters, Alice's River & Inklings Pubs |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand right here in the center of cobbled Radcliffe Square and look up at that glorious circular rotunda crowned by a soaring lead dome: the Radcliffe Camera. Designed by architect James Gibbs and completed in seventeen forty-nine with money bequeathed by royal physician John Radcliffe, this is Britain's earliest circular library and the architectural heart of Oxford University.
Did you know that beneath the cobbles under your boots lies an underground tunnel filled with millions of volumes? The Gladstone Link tunnel connects the Radcliffe Camera directly to the Old Bodleian Library, moving books via pneumatic tubes and electric trolleys beneath the historic square.
Just across the square sits Duke Humfrey's Library, the oldest reading room of the Bodleian, opened in fourteen eighty-eight with its carved timber ceiling and oak book presses. Harry Potter fans will instantly recognize Duke Humfrey's: it served as the Hogwarts Library in the movies, where Harry slips beneath his Invisibility Cloak into the Forbidden Section to search for Nicholas Flamel.
Below Duke Humfrey's sits the Divinity School, completed in fourteen eighty-eight with four hundred and fifty-five carved stone bosses. That magnificent Gothic vaulted hall became the Hogwarts Infirmary where Madam Pomfrey mends broken bones, and where Professor McGonagall teaches Ron Weasley to waltz for the Yule Ball.