Christ Church

About this place

The dining hall your children know from the Harry Potter films is not here; it was rebuilt on a studio set in its image. What Christ Church has is the original: the sixteenth-century Great Hall with its hammer-beam roof, its walls of portraits of dons and prime ministers, and the long tables where students still eat lunch every day. What actually was filmed here is the stone staircase leading up to the hall, and that is where half the visitors are taking the same photograph. Founded by Henry VIII in 1546, this is one of the largest and grandest of the Oxford colleges, and the only one whose chapel is also the city's cathedral. The visitor route begins at the Victorian Meadow Building, then takes in the Great Hall, the cloister, the cathedral with stained glass running from the fourteenth century to Edward Burne-Jones, and finally Tom Quad, Oxford's largest quadrangle, beneath Christopher Wren's Tom Tower, whose bell strikes 101 times every night at five past nine. Lewis Carroll taught mathematics here and wrote Alice in Wonderland for the dean's daughter; a window in the hall commemorates it. The Picture Gallery, with its Leonardo and Michelangelo drawings, is closed for renovation and extension, so do not count it into the visit. Entry is by timed ticket. Tickets for the following week go on sale online every Friday at around 10am, and in summer the good slots vanish quickly, so do not turn up on spec. In summer and over Christmas an adult ticket is £24.95 on weekdays and £26.95 at weekends; during term (October to mid-December) it drops by £2, booking in advance saves a further £2, under-fives are free, and the multimedia guide is included in the price in twelve languages, none of them Arabic. One detail matters more than the rest: the Great Hall closes Monday to Friday between noon and 2pm for student lunch, on Saturday mornings until 2pm during term, and in the evenings on event days; the booking system flags slots where the hall or cathedral is shut and reduces the price, so choose your slot deliberately. It suits families. The route is mostly level flagstones apart from the entrance steps and the staircase to the hall, there is a lift up to the hall for anyone who needs it, and large bags are not allowed. Doors close at 5pm all year, and on Sundays the site does not open until the afternoon, at 1.30pm or 2pm depending on the season. Allow an hour to ninety minutes inside, then walk out into Christ Church Meadow next door, a broad green space you can wander free of charge down to the river. Oxford station is about fifteen minutes on foot; drivers should leave the car at a park-and-ride on the edge of town, because getting into the centre by car is misery for no reward.