The best things to do in Cambridge

History is woven into the medieval lanes and cloistered colleges of this free-wheeling university town. But now a perky batch of new arrivals are adding cocktail and coffee culture to the equation. Here we outline the best things to do in Cambridge

By Steve King

2 June 2021

Most visitors to Cambridge go nuts about the place. Most of those who are stuck there for a few years as students only figure out how lovely it is, and how lucky they were, much later in life. Like olives and whisky, Cambridge is largely wasted on the young. Perhaps this has to do with the city’s alarming and, in a way, almost unbearable concentration of history and brilliance and beauty, which can seem overwhelming. The trick is to revel in the beauty without getting too hot up about the brilliance or the history. Go, as they say, with the flow. And as a visitor to Cambridge, that’s easy enough. During the summer months, there are people who, for a small consideration, will propel you with, or even against, the flow of the Cam, the river that runs through the middle of the city and gives it its name, in a long, low boat by means of a long, thin stick, beneath willow trees and bridges and past all manner of architectural marvels.

Alessandra Spairani
Cambridge is also a thriving 21st-century city, a centre of the tech industry. But its ancient, stony heart remains untroubled by progress. On a quiet night in the Lent term, as you clatter home through empty cobbled streets with the saints that loom over heavy doors glaring down at you through the fog, you’ll feel as though you’re just a power shortage away from a previous century. Vladimir Nabokov, who studied here in the early 1920s, wrote of it as a place where ‘nothing one looked at was shut off in terms of time, everything was a natural opening into it’. His idea of Cambridge as a series of doorways to the past, left forever ajar, is spot on. The fantastic thing about the city is the extent to which those doors remain open – not just to soulful literary types such as Nabokov, but to anyone who passes through them. (My only word of advice is to be nice to the college porters, who can, if they don’t like the look of you, slam the door in your face.) Nowhere else on earth is it as easy to travel across such great reaches of time, among such illustrious ghosts, in such a small geographical area, as it is in Cambridge.
Above: Senate House
Alessandra Spairani
Where to get your culture fix
Kettle’s Yard is a reminder of the marvellous ways in which the objects we surround ourselves with at home – furniture, photographs, flowerpots, whatever – can improve and enrich our everyday lives. It reopened in 2018 after a comprehensive three-year redevelopment and expansion, and is now better than ever. Its original owner, Jim Ede, was a curator at the Tate Gallery in London. He and his family moved to Kettle’s Yard in 1956 and, 10 years later, gifted the house and its contents to the University of Cambridge. The Edes’ exceptional collection of works by Ben Nicholson, David Jones, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Joan Miró, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, among others, was, and still is, displayed with the meticulousness and elegance of a haiku, a poem in glass, china, wood, stone and canvas. Today Kettle’s Yard is a house, a museum, an art gallery and a centre for research and education – as well as a uniquely moving expression of one man’s very particular taste and temperament.
Address: Kettle's Yard, Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 0AQ
Telephone: +44 1223 748100
Website: kettlesyard.co.uk
Simon Brown
Where to find a smart supper
For a while, serious foodies and undernourished students whose visiting parents would foot the bill had a pair of Michelin-starred restaurants to choose from. Last October, the figure was halved and the element of choice abolished altogether. Now, only Midsummer House remains, although with two of those coveted stars. It is sometimes referred to – amusingly if not altogether fairly, since chef Daniel Clifford is really quite unlike Heston Blumenthal – as The Fat Duckling. Meanwhile, across Parker’s Piece, the windswept common where the rules of football were formulated, is Tristan Welch’s Parker’s Tavern, also in a hotel, the University Arms. The latter emerged in 2018 after a renovation that magically turned an ageing frog into a fresh prince. Its combination of John Simpson froideur on the outside and Martin Brudnizki flash on the inside is irresistible. There is no better hotel in the city. Welch’s fabulous contemporary-British restaurant and elegant velvety bar seal the deal.
Websites: midsummerhouse.co.uk, tasting menu from £115; parkerstavern.com, about £50 for two
Read our full review of the University Arms
Alessandra Spairani
Where to pull a pint
Cambridge has never been a place where finding a drink was a matter of overwhelming complexity. Finding a good one, however, was a trickier business, unless you happened to be in possession of the keys to the fellows’ cellar in one of the grander colleges. The situation is improving. In addition to the bar at Parker’s Tavern, there is The Orator (previously 1815), in the Cambridge Union, which is now open to the public. In its former life, it was careworn and charming, with rattly windows and groaning floorboards, but the building underwent a revamp in 2020 and is now a smart, Farrow & Ball-finished space with bicycle wheels instead of art and large, library-like tables.
**Address:**The Orator, Round Church Street, Cambridge CB5 8AD
Website: theoratorcambridge.co.uk

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Above: roasted pumpkin on toast at Espresso Library.
Where to satisfy your sweet tooth
No visit to Cambridge would be complete without a Chelsea bun from Fitzbillies. ‘The world’s stickiest’ is their proud boast, though the recipe remains a closely guarded secret. (My guess is one-third pastry, one-third golden syrup, one-third reconstituted cannon ball.) The original Fitzbillies on Trumpington Street caught fire in 1998 and came within a cindered ace of oblivion. But it rose again – and a second Fitzbillies has recently opened over on Bridge Street.
Address: Fitzbillies, 51-52 Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RG
Telephone: +44 1223 352 500
Website: fitzbillies.com
Alessandra Spairani
Where to get the best coffee
The likes of Jack’s Gelato (pictured below), Bould Brothers Coffee (pictured above) and Hot Numbers, back in the gownie centre, may seem a trifle square after Mill Road. But Jack scoops handmade, providence-centric gelati (inventive flavours include salted balsamic caramel, Somerset apple brandy and Chelsea bun) from his minimal space on Bene’t Street. Around the corner from St John’s College, brothers Alex and Max Bould are devil-is-in-the-detail espresso-obsessives; or there’s Hot Numbers’ two outlets for single-origin stuff from Ethiopia, Colombia and Guatemala.
Websites: jacksgelato.com; bouldbrotherscoffee.co.uk; hotnumberscoffee.co.uk
Alessandra Spairani
Where to find sophisticated cocktails
Mill Road, to the east of the city centre, used to be a no-go area but is now one of the buzziest and most characterful corners of Cambridge – the Dalston of the Fens. At number 196 you will find 196. Something of a revelation. A serious cocktail bar, complete with heavily whiskered mixologists who are on first-name terms with bourbon producers in Kentucky and Tennessee and hand-scribbled drinks lists (try the Margarita with mescal, Cointreau, agave syrup and lime, or a Thomas H Handy Sazerac). Within a few minutes’ walk of 196 are the Relevant Record Café, for vinyl discs and proper java; Urban Larder, for equally convincing java, the vinyl replaced by tubs of Lego on each table and fat doughnuts behind the counter.
Website: 196bar.com; relevantrecordcafe.co.uk; urbanlarder.coffee
Alessandra Spairani
Above: The Old Schools at the University of Cambridge.
Where to shop
I don’t think you could, hand on heart, describe Cambridge as any sort of shopping wonderland. With, perhaps, one or two exceptions. The stalls on the Market Square are a lifesaver for impecunious chaps in need of a dirt-cheap second-hand monkey suit for a May Ball – so long as your date doesn’t mind the odd bit of moth damage and a cut that is more reminiscent of the age of Elizabeth I than Elizabeth II. And Cambridge is almost certainly the loveliest place in the land to purchase a bible. The Cambridge University Press Bookshop, located on a spot where books have been sold since 1581, including the Authorised Version of the Bible since it first appeared in 1611, will get you back onto the paths of righteousness, or near as, after all that carousing in cocktail bars.
Address: Cambridge University Press Bookshop, 1-2 Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1SZ
Telephone: +44 1223 333 333
Website: cambridge.org

Alessandra Spairani
Where to explore
And what about the famous colleges, without which Cambridge would hardly be Cambridge? Good question. There are, however, 30-odd of them, and each is a little universe unto itself. If you’re pressed for time, a reliable guide is worth his or her weight in gold. Many of the stories you hear repeated – of Lord Byron’s pet bear having its own set of rooms at Trinity College, or the gravity-defying feats of engineering that keep the Mathematical Bridge at Queens’ propped up – are total bunk. A friend of mine used to take tourists punting on the Cam in the summer holidays, when the punts are available. To amuse himself, he would point to any old building along the river and blithely inform his charges that it had been designed by Sophia Loren. You’d be surprised, he told me, how many people would simply nod and mutter: ‘Ah, yes. Mmm-hmm. Sophia Loren.’ Sir Christopher Wren was, of course, behind a number of buildings in Cambridge. Among them is the delightful little chapel at Pembroke College, which was, unless I’ve been misinformed, too, the first of his designs ever to be built.
Website: cambridgetourguide.co.uk
The best houses to rent in Cambridge
Take the bike path five miles outside the city to Waterlily Cabin, where you can watch birdlife bathe, skim and swim in the natural pond from the comfort of your own bed. The dinky space is built for two, with a private jetty for jumping off and a wicker swing seat for moments of solitude. Owner Jo leaves homemade goodies in the fridge, and she delivers a mean cooked breakfast too.
Price: From £100 a night
Website: kiphideaways.com
Just off Mill Road, Vaiva’s chic house is ideally located for exploring the city at your own pace – pick up lunch from Meadows Deli, stroll back through Parker’s Piece and pop back as often as you like. There’s space for six guests and a sunny garden, so make the most of the bright, minimalist property by gathering a group of friends and renting bikes to freewheel along the River Cam. It’s the perfect place for a university reunion – whether you graduated from Cambridge or not.
Price: From £250 a night
Website: airbnb.com
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Alessandra Spairani
Honey-soy chicken at Bread & Meat.

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A pint at Petersfield pub.
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The Bould Brothers and baristas, Alex and Max.
Alessandra Spairani
Bare Edison bulbs at Espresso Library café.
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Bicycles behind one of Trinity Lane's beautiful doorways.

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Bread & Meat café on Bene’t Street.
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Reading materials at Espresso Library.
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The rooftops of Trinity Street.
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The interiors at Bould Brothers café.

Simon Brown
Guest room at The University Arms Hotel, Cambridge.
Alessandra Spairani
A Scotch egg at the Petersfield pub.

TopicsDestinations Cambridge City Breaks Shopping England UK Europe Magazine March 2019 Issue

Where to get your culture fix

Where to find a smart supper

Where to pull a pint

Where to get the best coffee

Where to find sophisticated cocktails

Where to explore

The best houses to rent in Cambridge