Continue along New College Lane until you pass under another bridge which connects two buildings belonging to Hertford College. This bridge is sometimes called ‘the Bridge of Sighs.’ Stop here and look to your left and you will see what is perhaps the most impressive architectural view in all England: the square tower of the Bodleian Library, the round dome of the Radcliffe Camera and, beyond that, the soaring spire of the University Church. Begin to walk past these buildings.

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The Bridge of Sighs (completed in 1914) connects two sections of Hertford College over New College Lane. Its nickname is borrowed from the original in Venice, though this Oxford version carries no tragedy — only beauty.
Lewis often crossed or passed beneath this bridge on his way between colleges. He admired Oxford’s ability to hold contrasts: medieval cloisters beside modern stone, private thought beside public splendour.

This was the kind of scene that later inspired his descriptions of Narnia’s lamp-lit worlds — beauty wrapped in melancholy and wonder.

Standing here, you can almost feel the continuity of centuries: scholars hurrying to lectures, tourists snapping photos, and — in another time — Lewis himself, lost in thought, perhaps formulating one of his essays on beauty or truth.

Oxford’s skyline, seen from this point, has been called “a city with her head among the spires and her feet in the river.” Lewis loved that phrase; it captured, he said, “the idea of heaven brushing earth.”

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