London has more students than any other city in the world (over half a million at the last count), which isn't bad going for a city that only organized its own University in 1826, more than six hundred years after the likes of Oxford and Cambridge. The university started life in Bloomsbury, but it wasn't until after World War I that the institution really began to take over the area.

However, the university's piecemeal development has left the place with no real focus other than a couple of landmarks in the form of the 1930s Senate House skyscraper, behind the British Museum, and the Neoclassical University College (UCL; www.ucl.ac.uk, near the top of Gower Street. UCL is home to London's most famous art school, the Slade, which puts on temporary exhibitions in the Strang Print Room, in the south cloister of the main quadrangle (term-time Wed-Fri 1-5pm; free). Also on display in the south cloisters is the fully-clothed skeleton of philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), one of the university's founders, topped by a wax head and wide-brimmed hat.

The University also runs a couple of specialist museums. On the first floor of the Watson building, down Malet Place, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archeology (Tues-Fri 1-5pm, Sat 10am-1pm; free) has a couple of rooms jam-packed with antiquities, including the world's oldest dress. Tucked away in the southeast corner of Gordon Square, at no. 53, the Percial Daid Foundation of Chinese Art (Mon-Fri 10.30am-5pm; free) houses two floors of top-notch Chinese ceramics.

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