TRAVELING IN STYLE : CLASS ACT : The Architecture Is Imposing, and the History Is Vividly Alive in England’s Venerable Oxford, the World’s Most Famous College Town

OXFORD RISES FROM A SMOOTH plain, its skyline bristling with ancient buildings--more than 600 of them, nearly all protected as national treasures. By day, while church bells toll, ancient gates scrape and beloved fountains burble, these commanding edifices endure the rusty leanings of 30,000 bicycles--the preferred means of transportation here. At sunset, the same buildings hurl down epic shadows on the undergraduates hurrying along High Street. And when exams draw near at the 36 individual colleges that make up Oxford University, I can imagine that these old walls must evoke genuine horror in the minds of students: Fall behind in metaphysical poetry and the 14th-Century spire of St. Mary the Virgin will pierce your dreams. Overlook a subtlety of molecular biology and the bells of the 17th-Century Tom Tower at Christ Church College will toll for thee. It’s a wonder anyone graduates.

But Oxford is more than just architecture. Behind it stretches the longest lineage of college scholarship in the English-speaking world, spanning more than eight centuries. At Oxford studied W.H. Auden, Benazir Bhutto, Sir Richard Burton, John Donne, T.S. Eliot, Indira Gandhi, J. Paul Getty, Graham Greene, Joseph Heller, T.E. Lawrence, John Locke, Dudley Moore, Rupert Murdoch, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Ruskin, Leopold Stokowski, Margaret Thatcher, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Wesley, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Wren and many, many other notable and influential figures, British and otherwise.

At Oxford’s University College, Percy Bysshe Shelley was ejected after writing a paper on “The Necessity of Atheism.” Bill Clinton, on the other hand, lasted the full two years of his Rhodes Scholarship. (Moral for undergraduates: Trust in God and don’t inhale.)

Oxford graduate Evelyn Waugh set “Brideshead Revisited” here; Thomas Hardy portrayed the city in his great last novel, “Jude the Obscure.” Surprisingly little has changed in Oxford since Hardy’s day. Even the low-ceilinged Turf Tavern--in which Hardy’s Jude Fawley, a self-educated stonemason, silences a roomful of laborers and undergraduates by drunkenly declaiming in Latin--still stands. I lifted a tankard of my own beneath the same low ceiling this past June--hearty Archers Golden Lager, about $3.50 a pint--and watched the tavern’s regular and irregular customers gradually fill the place, growing louder as the sky darkened. I attempted no Latin, though.

And it might have been a character of Waugh’s I met another day--an ashen-faced young man who stepped out of a 19th-Century doorway as I walked on High Street near the university’s Examination Schools. His mandatory formal garb of dark-gray suit, white shirt, white bow tie, black shoes and academic gown and mortarboard ( subfusc in local parlance; the word literally means “drab” or “somber”) was bunched and rumpled. He was a law student, he told me, and he had just performed dreadfully, he feared, on his finals. But he was an Englishman at Oxford, and so he neither complained nor explained but fired up a cigarette and shuffled away, abject, unkempt and yet somehow noble.

About an hour’s drive northwest of London, Oxford today draws about 1.5 million visitors annually (compared to its 100,000 or so permanent residents). Some of these visitors merely browse the city’s storefronts--which include such shops as the Oxford Story, which does nothing but trade on the city’s (and the university’s) past--and, of course, Blackwell’s, an enterprise that began in 1879 as a 12-foot-square room on Broad Street and has grown to claim nine sites around town and a reputation as England’s premier bookseller. Others clamber onto the double-decker tour buses run by two competing companies through streets where horse-drawn carriages once commanded right of way. (Both companies charge about $9.50 for an hour-longtour, but the the green-and-cream Guide Friday bus uses live guides; the other line, Oxford Classic, offers only taped commentary.)

Still other visitors sit above the brass section of the City of Oxford Orchestra and listen as it sends Schubert resounding through the 323-year-old Sheldonian Theatre on High Street--a domed, airy, acoustically intimate building that was the first work designed by famed architect Christopher Wren. Or line up for views from on high, seeking out such elevated places as St. Mary the Virgin, Carfax Tower, or the Church of St. Michael-at-the-North-Gate. Or appraise the considerable collection of art and artifacts in the Ashmolean Museum, the first public museum in England, founded in 1683. (Also on exhibit here last summer was a fine example of circuitous English logic: “Two pounds from each visitor would keep the museum open and free,” suggested a sign at the entrance. Open, perhaps, but not exactly free.)

In July and August, when the city is empty of undergraduates, the tourist population peaks, and hundreds of Americans and others take up residence at college facilities to study, with widely varying intensities, in myriad summertime programs (see box). Oxfordians like to say that these programs define the term cultural exchange : the visitors get the culture, and Oxford gets the (foreign) exchange. In other months, visitors share hallowed halls with robed dons, bowler-hatted campus police, known as “bulldogs,” and the 14,000 students who link Oxford past to Oxford present. And while the buildings do cast a spell, it’s the students who keep the place alive.

Several years ago, on my first visit to Oxford, I was assigned to interview an American graduate student there. Her name was Bonnie St. John, and she was an international relations graduate of Harvard. She was also a champion skier despite the amputation of one leg above the knee, and an African-American. (Ironically, since she was a Rhodes Scholar, her fees were being paid from the fortune left by the most famous of Africa’s white colonizers, Oxford alumnus Cecil Rhodes.)

St. John showed me the ancient oath of good conduct she swore to get reading rights at the 390-year-old Bodleian Library, led me past the dangling dead rabbits of the covered market downtown and slipped an alcoholic gratuity to the porter at the gate of her 440-year-old campus. Nobody’s 12th-Century plans for this university had included her, but here she was, making the place her own. “Sometimes,” she said, “I stop in awe and just think, ‘Where am I?’ I live in this town with these storybook buildings, and I walk down the streets with the wind howling and see gargoyles and stained glass. It’s incredible.”

ON ONE OF THOSE SUNNY DAYS THAT awakened Evelyn Waugh to “the chestnut in flower and . . . the soft vapors of a thousand years of learning,” I strolled down High Street to the banks of the River Cherwell, where I descended the stone stairs and advanced to the planks at water’s edge. There, at the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse, I paid a rental deposit to fourth-generation proprietor Derek Howard and chose my vessel. A rowboat? Or a 70-year-old flat-bottomed mahogany punt, steerable only by pole, that might dump you in the drink if you’re inexperienced? A rowboat. I eased out into the calm water and drifted into the shade of a great stone arch.

Oxford was named, sometime before the 10th Century, for the livestock that crossed this river and the nearby Isis (as the Thames is known locally). It was a convenient location for a settlement, and in the 11th Century, the Normans built Oxford Castle here. All that remains of that is St. George’s Tower and an ancient mound near the current city prison. But the Normans also put up the city’s first three permanent bridges. One of them was the original version of the Magdalen Bridge, the cool, shimmering stone arch now above my head. These days, while the updated bridge bears the weight of automobiles above, American couples, French schoolchildren and English families navigate the waters below, ducks dodging their wayward oars.

By the early 12th Century, the Cherwell-crossing oxen had increasing company on the bridge. Most historians agree that Catholic monks, attracted by the establishment of a priory and several study halls, were the first to make the city a haven for scholarship, as early as 1133. But the French, in their way, were also helpful; when France expelled all English students from the University of Paris in 1167, many landed in Oxford.

Which college came first remains obscure and disputed, but in the following decades Balliol, Merton and University colleges were founded, and the university was granted a charter by the Pope. By the middle of the 13th Century, combined enrollment had reached about 1,500. By the middle of the 14th, Oriel, New and Queen’s colleges had arisen (it is typical of Oxford that an institution founded in 1379 is still called New College), as had town-gown tensions. On St. Scholastica’s Day in 1355, angry townspeople, who resented the university’s runaway growth while the surrounding town economy remained largely stagnant, killed 62 students. England’s monarchy, already dependent on the university for learned advisers, restored order and for centuries afterward required city dignitaries to pay an annual symbolic forfeit of 62 pennies, to be placed on the altar of the university’s Church of St. Mary the Virgin.

By the 16th Century, Magdalen College had arisen by the bridge of the same name, and battles over the Reformation were resounding through town. When a trio of prominent local Protestants defied her, the Catholic ruler Mary Tudor had them burned to death downtown. A cross on Broad Street marks the spot.

Meanwhile, new colleges kept rising, and students kept coming. By the time the English Civil War between the king and Parliament broke out in 1642, the city had grown to such strategic importance that when Charles I was chased from London, he retreated to Oxford and set up court among the campuses. According to local lore, Merton College became the Queen’s residence; All Souls was turned into an arsenal; the Christ Church quadrangle served as a cattle pen. After the king’s defeat, the colleges went back to their business, which by this time was already a 400-year-old tradition. (Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, a London-born clergyman named John Harvard was founding the American colonies’ first college in Massachusetts.)

Since then, more than a dozen additional colleges have emerged at Oxford, devoted to ever-more-modern specialties, bankrolled by patrons in such un-English climes as Dallas, Tex. All Oxford colleges are now coeducational except for women-only St. Hilda’s. Religious restrictions on students have been relaxed: They are no longer required to attend services. The Rhodes and Marshall scholarship programs import dozens of Americans and other foreign students every year. And there are other changes: Karaoke heavy metal music, I must report, is heard at the Oxford Brew House.

“We’re a dying breed,” lamented university policeman George Sandalls, when I spoke to him one day at the gate of Christ Church College. He is 74, an eight-year veteran of the job (which is traditionally given to police officers retired from more strenuous beats), and a black bowler sat comfortably atop his head. “Rules have become so lax now.”

I suppose it’s true. But the more he chatted, the more it seemed clear that a sprawling body of restrictions, written and unwritten, quaint and cruelly class-conscious, endure in robust health. There is the tale, for instance, of the man recently hired to join a neighboring college’s security force. A pensioner like Sandalls, he rushed out to purchase a tie bearing the colors and pattern of his new employer. For days he wore it proudly to his post at the campus gate, Sandalls recalled, until finally someone pulled the man aside. College ties, it was explained, are intended for the institution’s members--its students, faculty and alumni. The wearing of a college tie by an employee was really, well, inappropriate. The old man retired his new tie.

Egalitarians may prefer the lore of the central Christ Church fountain, which lies in the middle of the college quadrangle. Presided over by a statue of Mercury, it is a symbol of the university and a focal point in undergraduate pranks beyond counting. “If a student ends up in it, it costs him 40 pounds,” Sandalls told me. Of course, that student could someday end up as Prime Minister, as some 13 Christ Church alumni have, and might already wield wealth and power. Such students must be policed with tact. “Our job,” Sandalls said, “is to say, fatherly, ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir.’ ”

Meanwhile, life at Oxford goes on. Walk High Street on Friday evening past the Oddbins wine shop crammed with bottle-bearing customers in college ties. While they wait, tardy undergraduates flee past on their bicycles, scholars’ gowns inflated by the breeze. When the pubs close at 11, the students will appear again, shirts limp, gowns askew.

Or stake out the Sheldonian Theatre. If the month is June, a graduation ceremony may spill graduates and beaming families into the stone-walled courtyard. A young woman will adjust her mortarboard while a young man throws an arm around his father for a photograph.

Or wander south along the Cherwell. On the water, two young women balance their punt, slug down bottles of American beer, draw slowly on their cigarettes and ease past the cricket players. In the meadow beyond Merton College, two shirtless young men in boxing gloves spar lightly. If this scene were on a screen, the “Chariots of Fire” theme would now swell. Instead, the sounds are birdcalls, distant shouts, slowly moving water and perhaps faint echoes from that humbling skyline.

GUIDEBOOK: The Oxford File

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for Great Britain is 44. The city code for Oxford is 865 from outside Great Britain, 0865 from within. All prices are approximate and are computed at a rate of .52 pounds to the dollar. Hotel rates are for a double room for one night.

Getting there: Oxford lies 55 miles northwest of London, an hour’s drive on the M40 highway in average traffic. Citylink and Oxford Tube buses shuttle between the cities frequently, day and night, and a rail line runs from London’s Paddington Station to Oxford. Citylink buses run hourly to Oxford from Heathrow and Gatwick airports. The bus from Heathrow costs $15.25.

Where to stay: Because of its proximity to London and its consequent attractiveness to day-trippers, Oxford has fewer hotels than a traveler might expect. The most striking and best located is the Randolph, Beaumont Street, telephone 247-481, fax 791-678 (for reservations from North America call (800) 225-5843), a four-story, 109-unit, 1864 building that faces the Ashmolean Museum. Rate: $250. Substantial discounts are available for bookings well in advance and multiple-night stays that include a Saturday. Somewhat less costly accom modations are available at the Bath Place Hotel, 4 & 5 Bath Place, tel. 791-812, fax 791-834, a 10-unit cluster of 17th-Century rooms just down the alley from the popular Turf Tavern. Rates: $160-$240. Cheaper lodgings are available and can be arranged through the City of Oxford Information Center (see below).

Where to eat: Oxford is restaurant-rich, with ethnic spots ranging from Bilash Tandoori to the Blue Coyote. The three mentioned here are only a sampling of middle-range possibilities. Browns, 5-11 Woodstock Road, tel. 511-995, draws students, tourists and townies alike with moderate prices and a wood-and-greenery atmosphere. Main dishes run $11-$18. The Crypt, Frewin Court, tel. 251-000, despite its off-putting name, is an agreeable restaurant and wine bar set in a brick basement. Main dishes: $10-$20. The Nosebag, 6-8 St. Michael’s St., tel. 721-033, about whose name I’ll say nothing, is an option for vegetarians. It’s informal, upstairs and smallish, with buffet-style main dishes running $10-$12. The cheaper soups and salads are popular among diners on the run. About 12 miles southeast of Oxford, in Great Milton, is one of the most famous (and expensive) restaurants in England, Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. Here, French-born Raymond Blanc serves refined haute cuisine, good enough to earn him two stars in the Guide Michelin. Most main dishes are in the $40 range, with fixed-price multi-course dinners about $120 per person. There is an elegant 12-room hotel attached. Church Street, Great Milton, tel. (844) 278-881, fax (844) 278-847 (for reservations from North America call (800) 677-3524). Rates: $300-$450.

For more information: Contact the British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles, Calif. 90071; (213) 628-3525 or the City of Oxford Information Center, St. Aldate’s Street near Carfax, tel. 252-664 or 726-871.