University Arms Hotel

Opposite the University Arms lies Parker's Piece, 25 acres of open grass where the rules of Association Football were first drawn up. Where its two diagonal paths cross stands a single lamp-post, the first electric one in Cambridge, known to the city as Reality Checkpoint. The hotel has faced it since 1834, when it opened as a fifteen-room coaching inn for travellers on the long road to London. In 2018 it was rebuilt behind its old front for £80 million, by the architect John Simpson with Martin Brudnizki on the interiors, and came back with 189 rooms. Brudnizki has furnished them like college rooms with a bigger budget: carpets patterned after college ties, and shelves of books chosen by Heywood Hill, the Mayfair bookshop. In the suites, named after Cambridge authors and alumni, the budget stretches to claw-foot baths.

Recommended for a Cambridge stay with the colleges on foot and a common at the door, and for families, who get interconnecting rooms overlooking Parker's Piece and a children's menu of British classics reworked for younger palates. King's College is an eleven-minute walk. The bikes are lent free, and on one Jesus Green and its lido are seven minutes away. In summer there is cricket to watch on Parker's Piece, and a picnic to eat while watching it. Dinner is at Parker's Tavern, where Tristan Welch cooks British food from Cambridgeshire's fields and fens. On Fridays a jazz trio plays the bar from nine, and the cocktails come with a Cambridge reading list: Wittgenstein's Poker, after the philosopher, and The Sixth Man, which adds one to the Cambridge Five.