Bodleian Library

The Radcliffe Camera holds its ground in the center of the square, a heavy stone rotunda topped by a grand dome. It functions as the primary reading room for the Bodleian Library, housing history and theology collections within its circular walls. When it opened in seventeen forty-nine, the space served as a science library. Its architect, James Gibbs, drew up the plans, but the building owes its existence to a posthumous gift of forty thousand pounds from the royal physician John Radcliffe.