Explore England’s 16 Historic cities. Choose a path less travelled to get to the heart and soul of England, creating your own journey through our history and our countryside. From stories of monarchs and merchants, to breakfast on the beach, Shakespeare, Harry Potter and the Magna Carta, England’s Historic Cities has it all. Plan your perfect break, complete with tours, accommodation, attractions and rail pass.
Colleges, Cloisters & Castles
The City of Oxford and its university are twin marvels with a history stretching back more than 1000 years. Oxford’s skyline, which inspired its moniker ‘the City of Dreaming Spires’ is world famous for its hundreds of intricately pinnacled roofs to be seen all around. As well as being a centre of radical thought, Oxford has often been a city on the edge. When founded, it was a walled city, marking the border between the fierce Vikings to the north, and the Saxon resistance to the south. 500 years later it saw some of the fiercest fighting of the English Civil War and served as the King’s capital while the parliamentarians-controlled London.
