THE RADCLIFFE CAMERA, OXFORD

Seat of learning, boom town in our knowledgebased economy, focus of intellectual debate during the Victorian period, place of dreaming spires so freighted with fictional depictions – many Oxford buildings are first-rate and primus inter pares is the Radcliffe Camera.

This grand building, primarily a dome on a circular base of coupled columns, a reinterpretation on a bigger scale of Donato Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome, can be seen from practically everywhere in the city.

The rotunda deserves the prominence it commands, for it is a masterpiece, entirely suited to its location, a library both magisterial and magnificent. Architect James Gibbs’s friend Handel wrote music for the opening in 1749.

Dr John Radcliffe, who left money for the building in his will, had a chequered relationship with the university. Expelled from his fellowship, he became a physician. As doctor to the Royal Family, he famously told William III: “I would not have your Majesty’s legs for three kingdoms!”