Tower of the Five Orders
The Jacobean entrance tower of the Bodleian — a single building demonstrating all five classical orders, stacked vertically.
Walk into the Bodleian Old Schools Quadrangle (free, no ticket needed) for the closest view. Look up: each storey uses a different classical order — Tuscan at the bottom, then Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. The seated figure between the upper columns is James I, who refounded the library.
The Tower of the Five Orders is the gatehouse tower at the eastern entrance of the Bodleian Library's Old Schools Quadrangle, completed between 1613 and 1620 as part of Sir Thomas Bodley's expansion of the library. It is a textbook in stone of the five classical orders: from base to crown, the columns flanking each storey are successively Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite.
Such an exhaustive vertical demonstration of the orders is unique among English buildings of the period. The architect is uncertain — possibly the master mason John Akroyd of Halifax, working from designs influenced by Sebastiano Serlio's treatises on architecture. The tower was built early in the Jacobean reign, when classical detail was still being self-consciously studied as a vocabulary rather than absorbed.
The seated bronze figure in the niche between the fourth and fifth storeys is James I, presented as the patron-monarch of the refounded library, with allegorical figures of Fame and the University paying their respects.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
