Harvard University

Harvard University, founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most recognized academic campuses in the world. The historic core of the campus is Harvard Yard, a 22-acre enclave of Georgian and Federal-style red-brick buildings shaded by mature elms and horse chestnuts, entered through Johnston Gate on Massachusetts Avenue. At the center of the Yard stands the John Harvard Statue by Daniel Chester French — one of the most photographed monuments in New England, though the statue is known to depict a fictional representation rather than the historical John Harvard. Surrounding the statue are the oldest surviving Harvard buildings, including Massachusetts Hall (1720) and University Hall (1815), as well as Memorial Church and the vast Widener Memorial Library, one of the largest academic libraries in the world by volume. A short walk from the Yard leads to the Harvard Art Museums, which consolidate three formerly separate collections — the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum — under a single building redesigned by Renzo Piano and reopened in 2014. The combined holdings of approximately 250,000 works span antiquity to the present, with particular strengths in Italian Renaissance paintings, German Expressionism, and ancient Asian and Islamic art. Adjacent to the Art Museums, the Harvard Museum of Natural History houses the Glass Flowers: 4,300 botanically accurate glass models of plant specimens created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka between 1887 and 1936, regarded as one of the most extraordinary objects in any museum collection. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology shares the same building and presents Indigenous North American and Pacific Island cultural history. Harvard Square, the commercial neighborhood immediately outside the campus gates, contains independent bookshops, cafés, street musicians, and the historic Brattle Theatre cinema.