“Why are we visiting an university?” Manu was a bit blasé this last Sunday morning. It was early and our first impression of the Yale campus was that it looked a bit too much like the Harvard Yard. Okay, it’s not that bad but since we live in Boston there are red bricks all over. But after wandering in a few streets, Manu was completely charmed by the Yale campus (I was already anyway: big fan of the red bricks. The campus was huge but nice at the same time: dormitories are in big buildings looking like Westminster Abbey in London, gargoyles carved in stone have contemporaneous faces, and sometimes we can even think that we are in an Italian village. This campus is amazing! Good, because the rest of our weekend in Connecticut wasn’t a little bit “so-so”.
The Old Campus
Yale is the third oldest university in the US, founded in 1701, it’s the second richest in of the world, and the greatest rival of Harvard. There are about 12 000 students, 15 millions of books in the different libraries. A lot of presidents of the US and Nobel prizes studied there. Yale is an Ivy League – it was at first 8 private universities of the East Coast which compete in different games, and then it became a very selective place for rich and educated people. We have now seen all of the Ivy League of New England: Harvard à Cambridge, Dartmouth in New Hampshire and Brown in Providence! Unfortunately it doesn’t make us smarter.
Neo-gothic style
Neo-gothic, it’s like gothic but different. There’s a fusion of styles to make it looks like Notre Dame de Paris but newer.
And with touches of Venice style.
Hello there! it’s Sunday morning, everybody’s sleeping except us, tourists with camera.
I should think of a new career.
The fun part of this neo-gothic style was the sculpures carved in stones: no gargoyles or saints. The scenes were easier to understand: modern daily class, policeman and thieves, roasted chicken.
And then, some Egyptian style
This is the not modest entrance of the cemetery, with some Egyptian influences that make it looks pretty dramatic. Is this inscription means than there are zombies in Yale?
Go Yale!
The picture below represents a gym. I don’t know about your own gym in your college, but mine was pretty creppy, far away from everything – maybe the reason of I did only one semester of sports back then. But if I had been to Yale, no doubt I would be an Olympics champion now.
Beinecke Plaza
We walked a couple of hours in the campus, and thought that we saw everything but boom, we arrived at this gorgeous place, with tons of architecture jewels. This plaza is right in the middle of the campus, and we could see an incredible library whose walls were made of marble. There was also a big building with names of battles from the First World War, strange to see here familiar names. This building is nonetheless the cafeteria of the university.
I loved this campus. But we haven’t seen much of New Haven, the city where Yale is. Have you been there? Did you enjoy it?
