The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street holds a modest claim to fame: it was the world's first university museum.

Its origins lie in a cabinet of curiosities gifted to Oxford by Elias Ashmole in 1677, and its original star exhibit was the stuffed body of the last dodo ever seen in Europe. The specimen became moth-eaten over the centuries; only the head and one claw survive today. The present building, designed by Charles Cockerell in a grand classical style, dates from 1841 and houses one of Britain's finest collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, majolica pottery and English silver. Entry is free.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Ashmolean as a starting point to trace Oxford's long intellectual story, connecting the museum's origins in Ashmole's curiosity collection to the broader history of a university town where the impulse to gather, study and display the world has never quite gone away.