One of Oxford's most attractive campuses, St. John's has seven quiet quadrangles (which you first enter through a low wooden door) surrounded by elaborately carved, cloisterlike buildings. This college dates to 1555, when it was founded by a merchant named Sir Thomas White. His heart is buried in the chapel and, by tradition, students curse as they walk over it. The Canterbury Quad represented the first example of Italian Renaissance architecture in Oxford, and the Front Quad includes the buildings of the old St. Bernard's Monastary. St. John's is Tony Blair's alma mater and Oxford's wealthiest college, with an estimated endowment of half a billion dollars.
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