Though he wrote the Declaration of Independence and served as the third US president, Thomas Jefferson took more pride in having established the University of Virginia than in any of his other achievements, and after a visit you may well understand why. In 1976 the university was officially designated the greatest piece of architecture in the US; it also reveals the ideology of its patron, who, besides designing every building down to the most minute detail, also planned the curriculum and selected the faculty. Uniquely for universities of the time, which functioned primarily as seminaries, the University of Virginia was not rooted in religious training, but emphasized instead a broadly based liberal arts education, not surprising as Jefferson had been one of the prime proponents of the separation of church and state.

The highlight and architectural focus of the campus is the redbrick, white-domed Rotunda , modeled on the Pantheon and completed in 1821 to house the library and classrooms. A basement gallery tells the story of the university, while upstairs three elliptical classrooms are linked by a richly decorated central hall. A staircase winds up to the Dome Room , where Corinthian columns rise to an ocular skylight. From the Rotunda, where 45-minute guided tours of the campus begin (daily 10am-4pm; free), twin colonnades stretch along either side of a lushly landscaped quadrangle, linking together a string of single-story student apartments and taller pavilions in which professors live and hold tutorials. While the overall feel is harmonious, each individual block is unique, the differing facades and rooflines designed to show off the various orders and styles of Neoclassical architecture.

Parallel to the quadrangle buildings, two further rows of dormitory buildings, the East and West ranges, front on to serpentine walled gardens. Edgar Allan Poe stayed in one of these dorms while studying at the University of Virginia in 1826, but was forced to drop out after his stepfather cut off his allowance, apparently because Edgar had lost all of his money gambling. His room - Number 13, of course - in the West Range is now restored to how it would have looked during his occupancy, and is virtually the only campus interior, apart from the Rotunda, that you can visit.

University of Virginia

• University of Virginia

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