University of Cambridge

The west end of King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England, seen across the lawns of the Backs, its great window framed by two pinnacled turrets. Henry VI laid its foundation stone on July 25, 1446, and the main structure was complete by 1515. Its medieval stained glass came through the Civil War intact. Cambridge counts from 1209, when scholars fleeing hostile townsmen in Oxford settled in the old market town to study. Its first college, Peterhouse, followed in 1284, so the chapel shown here is a later flowering of a university already two centuries old.