It is the largest college quad in Oxford, measuring 264 by 261 feet.

You imagine for a moment that you are on some college quad, not before a palazzo made of stones dragged from the Colosseum.

The college's main building features a long gallery porch overlooking a picture-perfect college quad; warm afternoons find groups of students and faculty contentedly rocking in the porch's two dozen rocking chairs, talking, reading or thinking.

Just you try to go into the Bodleian Library and have a look around, or take a stroll through one of the college quads outside an extremely limited number of hours and see what happens.

This was nothing like the clunky three-speed bikes he had muscled around his college quad.

A notable feature of the building is the large old oak tree in the college quad.

And it is the background noise - or at least the kind of music little heard outside college quads - in which the upstarts specialize.

In August 2012, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan held a town hall event for 3,000 plus people on the college quad.

Scholars experience everything from eating lunch outside on the college quad, to visiting the university library, to partaking in a scientific experiment in a real college laboratory.

Suddenly the Stars and Stripes flew...from houses, from storefronts, from churches; above the village greens and college quads....[T]hat old flag meant something new.