Discover your city this September

In an Open Cambridge first, explore the rich history of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (7 September). Enjoy a tour around the site where Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, look inside the deserted control rooms and find out more about what the radio telescopes are used for. Located west of the city at the disused Lord’s Bridge railway station, the observatory is home to some of the largest and most advanced aperture synthesis radio telescopes in the world, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5-km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager. 

Making a welcome return to the Open Cambridge programme, join historian Professor Mark Goldie, Emeritus Professor of History and a Fellow of Churchill College, for a tour of the Ascension Parish Burial Ground on Huntingdon Road. A Cambridge Necropolis (7/10 September) will take you on a tour of one of Cambridge’s best kept secrets.

Explore the burial place of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, of three Nobel prizewinners (who split the atom, identified vitamins, and decoded haemoglobin), of the discoverer of the planet Neptune, of founding figures in economics and anthropology, of the astrophysicist who demonstrated Einstein’s theory, of a clutch of Darwins, and of women pioneers in higher education: in all, ninety people who have entries in Britain’s Dictionary of National Biography.  

Each year we’re delighted to be able to offer curated and unique tours of the American Battle Monument Commission’s Cambridge American Cemetery. This year learn more about the tens of thousands of Americans who came over to East Anglia during the Second World War as part of a huge network of airfields across the region (7/8/14/15 September). But who built them? Who flew from them? Perhaps you have heard the phrase, ‘thousand bomber raids’? Did you ever wonder where the aircraft came from? Book on to one of their excellent guided tours to hear the stories of the American’s who built the airfields and flew from them. 

One of Christopher Wren’s great masterpieces of architecture, the Wren Library at Trinity College, will also be opening its doors (6/7/9/10/11/12/13/14 September). This year see a special exhibition celebrating the bicentenary of Byron's death, exploring his network of friends, the connections across the publishing landscape of his works, and the routes of his travel. There will also be a specially curated exhibition of books about plants and gardening in the early modern world.