Cambridge’s famous university boasts late gothic quadrants and sleepy lawns, side-by-side with state of the art Norman Foster designed faculty buildings. Cambridge's 31 university colleges span so many centuries it's difficult to know where to start. Our top tip is to pack a picnic and Pimms, hire a punt, and drift behind the scenes on The Backs where you’ll pass college chapels and duck under stone bridges. On rainy days visit palatial university museums and galleries housed in neo-classical buildings and see bird-of-paradise plants in the botanic garden glasshouses. It’s not difficult to see how this city inspired the split of the atom and the discovery of DNA.