Radcliffe Camera
James Gibbs's English Palladian rotunda (1749) — the first circular library in the country and the most photographed building in Oxford.
The interior is only accessible via the Bodleian's extended (90-minute) guided tour. From outside, the best view is from the steps of St Mary's church on Radcliffe Square — frames the building between Brasenose to the right and the Old Schools Quadrangle behind.
The Radcliffe Camera was built between 1737 and 1749 by the Scottish architect James Gibbs, funded by a bequest from Dr John Radcliffe, royal physician and the wealthiest medic of his era. It was originally a free-standing science library — a building type then almost unknown in England — and is the country's first purpose-built circular library.
Gibbs's design draws on Bramante's Tempietto in Rome and the work of Italian Baroque architects, fused with the more restrained English Palladian tradition. The building consists of a rusticated stone podium, a colonnaded drum encircled by paired Corinthian columns, and a leaded dome. The interior is a single circular reading room, originally lit by sash windows on three levels.
Since 1860 the Camera has been part of the Bodleian Library and now serves as a History Faculty reading room. It cannot be entered casually — visitors must take the Bodleian's full 90-minute "Extended Tour" — but the exterior is freely visible from Radcliffe Square, the most consistently photographed open space in Oxford.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
