The Round Church (or Church of the Holy Sepulchre) was built around 1130.
It is a testament to the importance of Cambridge at the time - as an intense trading hub and key crossing of the river - 80 years before the university arrived.
It began as a chapel on that same old Roman road - and the circular nave was a deliberate echo of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
It is one of only 4 medieval round churches still in use in England.
However it has since been heavily worked over.
In the 15th century, the Norman windows were swapped for larger Gothic ones.
In the 17th century, the Civil War took many of the images the parishioners had come to consider idolatrous.
Fun fact : when part of the vault collapsed in 1841, the restoration was paid for and directed by the Cambridge Camden Society - founded 2 years earlier to promote Gothic architecture.
They promptly removed the 15th-century Gothic windows and put back copies of a surviving Norman one, and replaced the Gothic belfry with a conical Norman-style roof.
Their principle was that a building should be restored to a single period rather than keep its later additions - so the champions of Gothic stripped the real Gothic out of the Round Church.
🕐 On your way to the next stop
Our next stop is the Old Schools, where the university began. Carry on south down St John's Street and Trinity Street, past the gates of St John's and Trinity, and after about 5 minutes you will find them through the passage on Trinity Lane.
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