Oxford charges up to £20 to enter its famous colleges — yet the Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers, Natural History Museum and Christ Church Meadow are all free. Three days of world-class collections, market food under £7 and towpath walks that cost nothing.
Free entry, open daily 10:00–17:00 (courtyard from 09:00). Neo-Gothic glass roof over dinosaur skeletons, the Oxford Dodo remains that inspired Lewis Carroll, and a swifts nesting tower in the tall central tower.
Attached to the back of the Natural History Museum, free, 10:00–17:00 (Mon from 12:00). Half a million objects crammed in unlit Victorian cases arranged by type, not place — masks, amulets, canoes and Japanese Noh costumes.
Free public meadow open dawn to dusk via Rose Lane or St Aldate's. A flat loop past grazing Longhorn cattle to the Thames at Folly Bridge, with the back of Christ Church and Merton's spires framing the whole path.
Britain's oldest botanic garden (1621) charges entry, but the Danby Gate frontage, the walled boundary along Rose Lane and the punt-filled view from Magdalen Bridge over the Cherwell are all free to walk and photograph.
Trading since 1774 between High Street and Market Street, open 08:00–17:30. Ben's Cookies from £2.30, Brown's Café full breakfast around £8, pies at Pieminister and hot salt beef bagels — the cheapest sit-down food inside the ring road.
Open-air market on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, 08:30–15:30, beside the bus station. Street food stalls do Thai, Ethiopian and paella boxes for £6-8, plus a Thursday antiques and Saturday crafts run through the same square.
Free entry, Tuesday–Sunday 10:00–17:00. The Alfred Jewel, Guy Fawkes' lantern, Powhatan's Mantle and Egyptian mummies across five floors — Britain's first public museum and no ticket required for the permanent galleries.
Hidden down St Helen's Passage behind New College Lane, dating from 1381. Reached through an alley barely a shoulder wide; pints from about £5.50, hearty pub plates around £13, with beer-garden benches under the old city wall.
The 13th-century remnant of St Martin's Church at the city's central crossroads. £3 for adults gets you up 99 narrow spiral steps to a rooftop platform with a 360° view over the High Street, colleges and Cotswold-stone skyline.
Free walk from Hythe Bridge Street north along the Oxford Canal, past painted narrowboats and Jericho's Victorian terraces to Port Meadow. Flat, traffic-free, and passes St Barnabas Church and Walton Street's cheap cafés.
An ancient common grazed since before the Domesday Book, never ploughed, with wild horses and cattle. Free access all year; walk the Thames path north past Godstow Abbey ruins to Wolvercote for open sky and no admission gates.
The official university church on High Street. Nave entry is free; the 13th-century tower climb costs about £6 for the best rooftop view of the Radcliffe Camera dome, All Souls and the whole quadrangle skyline.