Princeton: The town and the university
Mercer Street , the long road that sweeps southwest past the university campus to Nassau Street, is lined with elegant colonial houses, graced with shutters, columns and wrought-iron fences. The Princeton Battlefield State Park , a mile out, includes the Thomas Clarke House , 500 Mercer St, a Quaker farmhouse that served as a hospital during the battle (park open daily dawn to dusk, house open Wed-Sat 10am-noon & 1-4pm, Sun 1-4pm; free; tel 609/921-0074). The simple house at 112 Mercer St, back toward town, is where Albert Einstein lived while teaching at the Institute of Advanced Study (however, it is not open to the public).Princeton University's tranquil and shaded campus is a beautiful place for a stroll. Just inside the main gates on Nassau Street, Nassau Hall (tours Mon-Sat 10am, 11am, 1.30pm & 3.30pm, Sun 1.30pm & 3.30pm; free; tel 609/258-3606) was, when constructed in 1756, the largest stone building in the nation; its 26-inch-thick walls (now patterned with plaques and patches of ivy placed by graduating classes) withstood American and British fire during the Revolution. It was also the seat of government during Princeton's brief spell as national capital. The 1925 chapel , based on one at Kings College, Cambridge University, in England, has stained-glass windows showing scenes from works by Dante, Shakespeare and Milton, as well as the Bible, and the Prospect Gardens, a flowerbed in the shape of the university emblem, are a blaze of orange in summer. In the middle of the campus, fronted by the Picasso sculpture Head of a Woman , the University Art Museum , not included on the standard tours, is well worth a look for its collection from the Renaissance to the present, including Modigliani, Van Gogh and Warhol, and Chinese and pre-Columbian art (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; tel 609/452-3787; free).
While Princeton has found itself acting as a sanctuary and gathering place for exiled members of China's democracy movement since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, a substantial number of those who visit are disarmingly conservative prospective students and their proud parents, soaking up the tales of old-boy pranks and superstitions that prop up the Ivy League tradition. The student-led tours may be complacent, but they are free; they leave from the Frist Campus Center, facing Washington Road (Mon-Sat 10am, 11am, 1.30pm & 3.30pm, Sun 1.30pm & 3.30pm; tel 609/258-3603).
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