Magdalen College

Our final tour took us around Magdalen, a college founded in 1458. The current Magdalen library building looks like it's suffering an identity crisis; from the outside the building appears to date from around the early days of the college, students even enter through an inches thick solid wood door, but the interior looks like pretty much any 20th century library with an 8-foot ceiling, carpet, modern shelving, a DVD collection, but wait! The ceiling of the upstairs room stretches up-up-up, crossed with thick dark beams, stone walls, ornate windows...what happened here?

Turns out, that Charles Goodwin Scott had the library building renovated in the 1920s. He took the single tall hall and divided it horizontally with the installation of a second floor. Looking closely, visitors may notice that the rectangular windows on the first floor actually continue up through the ceiling into the upper floor. While the design offers a lot more space than the single large hall, it's not very attractive, and the library still need more room. Plans are in the works for a renovation that will open up the second floor atrium-style, add another level, adding usable space while returning the building closer to its original design.

The old library building is still on the campus and used as a manuscript archive. It's a beautiful space with crenelated wood shelving packed with old leather-bound tomes that look like something Hermione Granger would enjoy reading. A point of interest, the library was also used as the detention center, where miscreants would sit and write lines in punishment for their offenses. (Images of a medieval Bart Simpson spring to mind.)

Christine also showed us to the Magdalen archives housed in yet another old building on the campus. I'm so jealous of these librarians who get to work in beautiful places steeped in history.

In addition to the library tours, Christine showed us around campus with the keys to several very imposing doors including the one to the bell tower. I neglected to count the steps up the tower because my brain was occupied by more pressing thoughts, such as not falling and tumbling all the way to the bottom, but someone else said they thought there were about seven hundred and eighty three, not including the ladder at the top. This count may be subject to argument. Regardless, the views were spectacular.



We also had a chance to see the chapel, which houses a contemporary copy of DaVinci's last supper. There is some speculation that DaVinci may have had a hand in the copy, although this hasn't been proven, but when restoration work was done on the original, conservationists consulted Magdalen's copy to make sure they were getting things right.