Yale University
Founded 1701, The Third Oldest University In The United States; Its Campus Holds The Yale University Art Gallery, The Oldest College Art Museum In The Western Hemisphere, Along With The Peabody Museum And The Beinecke Rare Book Library · New Haven, Connecticut
Yale was founded in 1701, which makes it the third oldest university in the country, and its campus is the reason to walk around New Haven. The Gothic Revival quadrangles of the 1920s and 1930s were deliberately built to look centuries older than they are, down to artificially worn steps and acid-treated stone, and they work. Three buildings on the campus are worth a trip on their own: the Yale University Art Gallery, founded in 1832 and the oldest college art museum in the western hemisphere; the Peabody Museum of Natural History, whose Great Hall of Dinosaurs holds the Brontosaurus type specimen; and the Beinecke Rare Book Library, a windowless marble box whose panels are thin enough to glow amber from inside, with a Gutenberg Bible in the tower. All three are free. The campus is also open, which visitors routinely do not realise - the quadrangles can be walked through and the two art museums charge nothing at all, which is the best value in New England.
149 Elm Street, New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511, United States
The campus is open to walk through at all hours and the courtyards are generally accessible in daylight. The museums keep their own separate hours and at least one of them is usually closed on a given weekday - Mondays most often - with reduced schedules between terms and over the winter holidays. Free student-led campus tours run from the visitor centre on a published timetable, and are reduced or paused during breaks.