As anyone who's lived in Oxford will tell you, the worst question a tourist can ask you is "where's the university?" - and the difficulty in answering this question stems directly from the University's medieval roots.

The university, in its original sense, wasn't a building or a collection of buildings, but a community made up of scholars. So the University of Oxford (or Paris or Bologna etc.) was the community of masters who taught there and the student whom they taught. In Oxford, the earliest lectures took place in the University Church of St-Mary's, on High Street (just in front of the current Radcliffe Camera) - probably in the side rooms, such as where the coffee shop is now. Originally, the students lived in Halls - essentially boarding houses run by a master, with strict rules for the students, which would have originally looked pretty much like any other large house in the town - St-Edmund's Hall is the last remaining medieval hall, but has been substantially rebuilt. Colleges began to be founded in the thirteenth century (Merton, University and Bailiol all have claims to being the oldest surviving college), with large endowments which allowed them to start building the elaborate college quadrangles and chapels which have become iconic today - the oldest surviving piece of college architecture in Oxford is the late 13th century quad in Merton college.