Durham's 11th-century Norman Cathedral was built between 1096 and 1130 and is one of the world's truly great buildings. Durham Castle, now part of the University, dates from 1072 and was the seat of the all-powerful Prince-Bishops who wielded secular and religious power over much of the North of England, with their own armies, system of taxation and coinage - until the end of the Prince-Bishopric in 1832 Durham was effectively a state within a state.
Durham University is distinctive - a residential collegiate university with long traditions and modern values. We seek the highest distinction in research and scholarship and are committed to excellence in all aspects of education and transmission of knowledge. Our research and scholarship affect every continent.
We are proud to be an international scholarly community which reflects the ambitions of cultures from around the world. We promote individual participation, providing a rounded education in which students, staff and alumni gain both the academic and the personal skills required to flourish.
Durham became one of England's leading centres of medieval scholarship, along with Oxford and Cambridge. Indeed, three Colleges - now part of Oxford University - were founded from Durham (University College and Balliol College, and in 1286 Durham College was run from Durham to train scholars for Durham for 300 years until it became incorporated into the University of Oxford as Trinity College). Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell's attempts to formally establish a University for the North in Durham were subsumed by politics and North-South rivalries, and it was not until 1832, as the Prince-Bishopric declined lost his powers, was Durham finally endowed with the Castle and lands and granted degree awarding powers by the king as England's third University. Durham University is the inheritor of a continuous line of learning and scholarship dating from Bede and Cuthbert to the present day.
'Durham is one of the world's great universities and one of the most distinctive. We aim to build on success with an ambitious strategy that is seeing us invest in new facilities that will enhance research, teaching and the wider student experience while continuing to attract some of the world's best academics to Durham.'