Colleges, a great library and a university science site on the western side of the city.
West of the Backs the city opens out into wide college grounds and university sites. It has no old village core to organise it. What links the places below is that most of them are products of the last century and a half.
The women's colleges give the area much of its character. Girton was founded in 1869 as the first college for women in Cambridge, and Lucy Cavendish followed in 1965, set up by women academics of the university. Murray Edwards opened in 1954 under the name New Hall, and its original buildings on Huntingdon Road are Grade II* listed.
The others have distinct stories. Churchill was planned as a national memorial to Winston Churchill, with its charter approved in 1960. Fitzwilliam grew around The Grove, a Regency house of 1813. St Edmund's began in 1896 as St Edmund's House, and Clare Hall was founded in 1966 as an institute for advanced study. Selwyn dates from 1882 as a memorial to a bishop, and Robinson, founded in 1977, is now Grade II* listed.
Two shared university buildings sit nearby. The University Library has a history reaching back to the early fifteenth century, though its present building dates from 1931-1934. West Road Concert Hall opened in 1978, a few minutes' walk west of the Backs.
Further out, the university's West Cambridge site lies between the M11 and Madingley Road. Several departments moved there from the centre of town because of overcrowding. Excavations on the site in 1999 and 2000 showed that a Roman settlement dominates its archaeology.
A modernist science-and-technology college set up as a national memorial to Winston Churchill, with sculpture on a 50-acre campus.
A small graduate college of the 1960s, built as an institute for advanced study, with Grade II* listed original buildings.
A 1960s modernist college built around a Regency manor house, with potager gardens and lawns you may walk on.
The first women's college in Cambridge, set in red-brick Waterhouse buildings and fifty acres of grounds.
A 1960s college founded by women academics, set among converted 19th-century villas on the western edge of the centre.
A Grade II* listed 1960s concrete campus with the Dome dining hall, the Women's Art Collection and free daily entry.
A handmade-brick college of the 1970s, Grade II* listed, wrapped around a walled mosaic of Victorian gardens.
A Victorian memorial college in golden Ketton stone and red brick, with large lawns and a Wren-linked dining hall.
A college of Catholic origins for mature and graduate students, with a Grade II listed Gothic Revival chapel.
The university's main research library, a legal-deposit giant under a brick tower visible across the city.
The refreshment room in the North Wing of the University Library.
A bike shop and workshop at Eddington, known for cargo bikes, repairs and short-term hire.