4 oldest university towns famous Oxford,Bologna,Heidelberg,Salamanca What do you like most ? (2015, universities)

[urdiales]

They Are 4 wonderful hometowns of the oldest universities of Europe -
When we walk through these cities always we remember the privilege of studying there.-
Some reader had de good fortune to study or to know this cities. Can tell your experiencie and opinion of those cities.?

-.

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by urdiales

They Are 4 wonderful hometowns of the oldest universities of Europe -
When we walk through these cities always we remember the privilege of studying there.-
Some reader had de good fortune to study or to know this cities. Can tell your experiencie and opinion of those cities.?

-.

There are some very beautiful and old university towns across the world, and the Ancient Universities you have mentioned are indeed all magnificent institutions.

[RMoore36]

You are mistaken.

The 4 oldest universities are:

Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca & Cambridge.

[NOLA101]

Heidelberg isn't the oldest German university. It's actually Charles University in Prague (historically Karls-Universität).

[tangelag]

I have studied at the University of Salamanca twice. Salamanca is my 'home in Spain' even though I don't 'live' there. The calibre of the university is of the absolute highest. Salamanca is 'special'. Difficult for me to describe. I just love it...

[viribusunitis]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Heidelberg isn't the oldest German university. It's actually Charles University in Prague (historically Karls-Universität).

Oldest German-speaking university is now University of Vienna.

[Urania93]

About Bologna, I don't see it as more as more famous or important than other universities here in Italy. Among our "normal" university it often ranks in the first positions thought.
Maybe we don't feel so much the "charm of the ancient" because a lot of our universities have been founded before 1500?

[urdiales]

The University Paris is among the 4 oldest Universities but place Heidelberg in replacing Paris because we are talking about of cities that are part also today of these universities and Paris is a huge city where is subsumed its University .-

Are these cities that always remind their student as unforgetable.
I will say 1 anedocte of Salamanca for encourage others to tell stories of their experiencie in these cities.
The students who earned a doctorate in Salamanca had a right to paint in their facades one VICTOR (drawing indicating the win)with your name In some cases with blood of bull.


The Emperors of Japan went to Salamanca on honeymoon and they fell in love with the city.

And they ordered reproduce the facade of University and take it to Japan forever remember Salamanca.(cost 272 million of pts this replica) and anually send every year many students to Salamanca
The University thankful gave a VICTOR with their name in a facade of Salamanca.-

[NOLA101]

I actually don't think that Heidelberg (the city or university) is that impressive from a visitor perspective (though my parents met there).

For German universities in Germany, I would say that Tübingen or Marburg are more beautiful university towns.

Also, oldest doesn't necessarily mean most prestigious. It really varies. Stanford is a very new university (founded 1891) and is best in the world in some disciplines. Yes, Bologna is the world's oldest university, but is it the most prestigious in Italy? I don't know. I hear about Sapienza University much more. But I don't know the Italian universities that well, so who knows.

[Urania93]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

I actually don't think that Heidelberg (the city or university) is that impressive from a visitor perspective (though my parents met there).

For German universities in Germany, I would say that Tübingen or Marburg are more beautiful university towns.

Also, oldest doesn't necessarily mean most prestigious. It really varies. Stanford is a very new university (founded 1891) and is best in the world in some disciplines. Yes, Bologna is the world's oldest university, but is it the most prestigious in Italy? I don't know. I hear about Sapienza University much more. But I don't know the Italian universities that well, so who knows.

Our universities are not so famous and competitive at an international level, unfortunately.
The "Università la Sapienza" in Rome is probably more famous because it is larger (according to Wikipedia, the page in Italian, "la Sapienza" had 129.500 enrolled students in 2010, which made of it the largest university in Europe and the 40th worldwide for the number of students. (Maybe the numbers are a little old). The Bologna University has more or less 80.000 students, and some departments are not hosted in Bologna but in other cities of the region.)

About the most prestigious universities, there are a lot of ranking but they are never in agreement one with the others.

1° ranking: Le migliori università italiane: la classifica 2015 de Il Sole 24 Ore
This ranking is made at a national level by a newspaper called "il Sole 24 ore". It refers to 2015.
1 Verona
2 Trento
3 Politecnico di Milano
4 Bologna
5 Padova
6 Milano Bicocca
7 Siena
8 Politecnica delle Marche
9 Venezia Ca' Foscari
10 Pavia

Here there is another national ranking, in which universities are divided according to the number of students. --> Classifica completa Censis delle Università italiane 2015-2016 - Censis Guida
This is the ranking for the period 2015-2016
You can see a lot of different rankings (you can focus on certain subjects, on the didactic or on the research). The most general still divide the university according to the number of students and says:

Mega-universities (more than 40.000 students)
1) Bologna
2) Padova
3) Firenze
(Roma la Sapienza is 8th)

and so on. As I already said, these rankings seem to like Bologna a lot (I talk like this because I study in the University of Turin, so there is some rivalry with other universities )

The general trend is that university in norther-central Italy, and Rome, seem to rank much better than southern Italy ones. Furthermore, there are really a lot of students who move in northern Italy for studying, while it is practically impossible to see a northern who enrolls to a southern Italy university.

About international rankings, we are quite at the bottom of the ranking (US university rule those rankings...)
For example: QS World University Rankings® 2015/16 | Top Universities

187 Politecnico di Milano
204 University of Bologna
213 University la Sapienza of Rome
306 University of Milan
309 University of Padova
314 Politecnico di Torino
367 University of Pisa
^ all the positions are really high, the first one is in 187th position!

My university is in the range 501-550, how depressing...