89km (55 miles) N of London; 129km (80 miles) NE of Oxford

The university town of Cambridge is a collage of images: the Bridge of Sighs; spires and turrets; drooping willows; dusty secondhand bookshops; carol-singing on Christmas Eve in King's College Chapel; dancing until sunrise at the May balls; Elizabethan madrigals; narrow lanes upon which Darwin, Newton, and Cromwell once walked; the "Backs" where the college lawns sweep down to the River Cam; tattered black robes of hurrying upperclassmen flying in the wind.

Along with Oxford, Cambridge is one of Britain's ancient seats of learning. In many ways their stories are similar, particularly the age-old conflict between town and gown. As far as the locals are concerned, alumni such as Isaac Newton, John Milton, and Virginia Woolf aren't from yesterday. Cambridge continues to graduate many famous scientists such as physicist Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time.

In the 1990s, Cambridge became known as a high-tech outpost, or "a silicon fen," if you will. High-tech ventures continue to base themselves here to produce new software -- start-up companies producing $3 billion a year in revenues. Even Bill Gates, in 1997, financed an £80 million ($128 million) research center here, claiming that Cambridge was becoming "a world center of advanced technology."