unofficial fixtures. In addition to this, the University Parks contain sites of special interest including the Genetic Garden, an experimental garden to elucidate and investigate evolutionary processes.

The Museum of the History of Science is housed on Broad St in the world’s oldest-surviving purpose-built museum building.[49] It contains 15,000 artefacts, from antiquity to the 20th century, representing almost all aspects of the history of science. In the Faculty of Music on St Aldate's is the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, a collection mostly of instruments from Western classical music, from the medieval period onwards. Christ Church Picture Gallery holds a collection of over 200 old master paintings.
Parks[edit]


Autumn in the Botanic Garden.
The University Parks are a 70-acre parkland area in the northeast of city. It is open free of charge to the public during daylight hours. As well as providing beautiful gardens and rare and exotic plants, the parks contains numerous sports fields, used for official and unofficial fixtures. In addition to this, the University Parks contain sites of special interest including the Genetic Garden, an experimental garden to elucidate and investigate evolutionary processes.
The Botanic Garden on the High Street is the oldest botanic garden in the UK and the third-oldest scientific garden in the world. It contains over 8,000 different plant species on 1.8 hectares (4½ acres). It is one of the most diverse yet compact collections of plants in the world and includes representatives from over 90% of the higher plant families. The Harcourt Arboretum is a 130-acre site six miles south of the city that includes native woodland and 67 acres of meadow. The 1,000-acre Wytham Woods are owned by the University and used or research in zoology and climate change.
There are also various collegiate-owned open spaces open to the public, including Bagley Wood and most notably Christ Church Meadow.[50]
Organisation[edit]

See also: Category:Departments of the University of Oxford
As a collegiate university, Oxford's structure can be confusing to those unfamiliar with it. The university is a federation, comprising over forty self-governing colleges and halls, along with a central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor.
Academic departments are located centrally within the structure of the federation; they are not affiliated with any particular college. Departments provide facilities for teaching and research, determine the syllabi and guidelines for the teaching of students, perform research, and deliver lectures and seminars.
Colleges arrange the tutorial teaching for their undergraduates, and the members of an academic department are spread around many colleges. Though certain colleges do have subject alignments (e.g., Nuffield College as a centre for the social sciences), these are exceptions, and most colleges will have a broad mix of academics and students from a diverse range of subjects. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the central university (the Bodleian), by the departments (individual departmental libraries, such as the English Faculty Library), and by colleges (each of which maintains a multi-discipline library for the use of its members).