Oxford

The heart of dark academia: a medieval Divinity School with a fan-vaulted stone ceiling like frozen lace, the ancient Duke Humfrey’s Library above it (which stood in for Hogwarts), and the domed Radcliffe Camera next door. Tour the old libraries, or just stand in the Divinity School and look up until your neck aches.

Best shot The fan vault of the Divinity School, or the Radcliffe Camera through an archway at dusk.

• Touristy

The strangest museum in England, a dim Victorian hall crammed floor to ceiling with anthropology arranged by type rather than place: cases of shrunken heads, witch-bottles, charms against the evil eye, blades and masks and the frankly cursed. Bring a torch, they keep it dark on purpose. Free, and unforgettable.

• Quiet

The grandest of the colleges, with a dining hall that inspired Hogwarts’ and a cathedral built into the college itself, plus the staircase where a certain film wizard was welcomed. Beautiful and utterly overrun, so book a timed ticket and go early.

• Touristy

Hertford College’s covered bridge arching over New College Lane, all pinnacles and tracery, universally called the Bridge of Sighs. Duck underneath and down the lane to find the Turf Tavern. Free, and the most photographed span in the city.

Best shot The covered bridge over the narrow lane, floodlit at night or backlit at dusk.

A Norman castle mound and a Victorian prison rolled into one, with a crypt, a climbable Saxon tower and cell blocks that held prisoners until 1996. Tour the gaol with costumed guides, or just climb the grassy motte. Part of it is now a hotel: you can literally sleep in the cells.

• Adults only

A small Victorian cemetery deliberately left to run wild as a nature reserve, ivy and long grass and leaning stones, where Kenneth Grahame of The Wind in the Willows and a scatter of dons lie among the brambles. Central, hidden and almost always empty.

Best shot Leaning headstones lost in long grass and ivy, in soft light.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

The world’s oldest surviving purpose-built museum building, a dark panelled hall of astrolabes, sundials, early surgical kit and alchemical glass, with Einstein’s chalked blackboard preserved on the wall. Small, free and quietly wonderful.

• Quiet

The loveliest of the colleges, with a bell tower, medieval cloisters carved with grotesques, a deer park and a riverside walk that goes gold and misty in autumn. Pay the entry, then lose the crowds down Addison’s Walk.

Best shot The cloister grotesques, or the tower reflected in the Cherwell at dawn.

• Quiet

A hotel built inside the Victorian wing of Oxford Prison, where the rooms are converted cells, three knocked into one, behind the original heavy doors and barred windows, done up dark and plush. Sleeping in a former cell has never been this comfortable.

• Adults only
• Quiet

A 17th-century ivy-clad house at the top of St Giles’, all wood fires, oil paintings and low beams, once home to Oscar Wilde for a spell. Dark, plush and grown-up, with a walled terrace for a nightcap.

• Adults only
• Quiet

Oxford’s grand Victorian neo-gothic hotel, all sweeping staircases and dark panelling, forever tied to Inspector Morse, who drank in its bar. Faded grandeur opposite the Ashmolean. Come for a cocktail in the Morse Bar if not the room.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A 13th-century pub buried down a twist of medieval alleys behind the Bridge of Sighs, low-beamed and candlelit with a warren of tiny courtyards. Famous, so busy, but finding it feels like a secret and drinking in it feels like 1400. Follow the signs and the crowds.

• Adults only
• Touristy

One of the oldest pubs in Oxford, dating to 1242, tiny and low and dark, its ceilings covered in thousands of snipped-off necktie ends behind glass. You will have to duck. Worth it.

• Solo-friendly

A wonderfully cluttered old backstreet pub in Jericho, every surface buried under bric-a-brac and dangling junk, with a surprisingly good French kitchen hidden inside. Cosy, dim and completely itself.

• Solo-friendly
• Adults only

The great Oxford bookshop, whose modest frontage hides the cavernous underground Norrington Room, once the largest single room selling books in the world, shelves marching off into the dark beneath Trinity College. A cathedral for readers. Go down.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet

A covered market going since 1774, a maze of small shops and stalls, from an old cobbler and butchers to cafes and quirky independents. Good shelter from the rain and the crowds, and a proper old cake shop for the walk.

• Solo-friendly

A tightly packed vintage shop on a corner in the centre, decades of clothing crammed on the rails, good for a proper dig and the occasional perfect find in black.

• Solo-friendly