Open Cambridge 2024: Our guide to the highlights

Historic places that are usually hidden away are opening their doors as Open Cambridge, the annual 10-day festival and celebration of local history and culture, gets under way.

Each year, Open Cambridge offers a mix of events celebrating the heritage and culture of Cambridge and the county beyond. From today (6 September) until 15 September visitors can enjoy guided tours, exhibitions, open gardens and buildings, and more.

This year there is everything from a guided tour around the radio telescopes in the fields around Barton to a tour around the burial ground of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, three Nobel Prize winners and the discoverer of Neptune. There is an open day at the museum which tells the extraordinary stories of ordinary people in Cambridge, and the hidden Second World War Two airfield in Bottisham, as well as the chance to visit some of the beautiful college libraries and gardens.

Open Cambridge manager Zoe Smith said: “As usual, this year’s Open Cambridge programme has something for everyone to enjoy. This selection of highlights shows the huge breadth of events that should appeal to all sorts of interests.

“I’m delighted that we’ve been able to secure tours of the Mullard Radio Telescope Observatory, a first for Open Cambridge as well as seeing favourites such as the American Cemetery and Bottisham Airfield Museum returning.”

Here are some of this year’s festival highlights...

Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory

In an Open Cambridge first, explore the rich history of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (7 September). Enjoy a tour around the site where Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, look inside the deserted control rooms and find out more about what the radio telescopes are used for. Located west of the city at the disused Lord’s Bridge railway station, the observatory is home to largest and most advanced aperture synthesis radio telescopes in the world, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5-km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager.

Ascension Parish Burial Ground on Huntingdon Road

Making a welcome return to the Open Cambridge programme, join historian Professor Mark Goldie, Emeritus Professor of History and a Fellow of Churchill College, for a tour of the Ascension Parish Burial Ground on Huntingdon Road. A Cambridge Necropolis (7/10 September) will take you on a tour of one of Cambridge’s best kept secrets. Explore the burial place of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, of three Nobel prizewinners (who split the atom, identified vitamins, and decoded haemoglobin), of the discoverer of the planet Neptune, of founding figures in economics and anthropology, of the astrophysicist who demonstrated Einstein’s theory, of a clutch of Darwins, and of women pioneers in higher education: in all, 90 people who have entries in Britain’s Dictionary of National Biography.

Cambridge American Cemetery tours

Each year the festival offers curated and unique tours of the American Battle Monument Commission’s Cambridge American Cemetery. This year visitors can learn more about the tens of thousands of Americans who came over to East Anglia during the Second World War as part of a huge network of airfields across the region (7/8/14/15 September). But who built them? Who flew from them? Book on to one of their excellent guided tours to hear the stories of the America’s who built the airfields and flew from them.

Museum of Cambridge

The Museum of Cambridge will be opening their doors on Thursday, 12 September for free. Discover the extraordinary stories of the ordinary people of Cambridge and explore the 16th-century coaching inn and see what life was like throughout the history of Cambridge. There is also a chance to visit the temporary exhibition, The Stories Behind the Stitches, to learn about the link between crafting and wellbeing, and explore more than 400 years of social history.

Bottisham Airfield Museum

Enjoy free entry to Bottisham Airfield Museum (8/11/15 September) and see the collection of artefacts telling the personal stories of some of those based at the airfield. Bottisham was unique as the only airfield to host three different Air Forces, during World War Two. Find out about Alex Macmillan – a fighter pilot who was shot down while flying from Bottisham and was taken to Stalag Luft III. There is a new exhibit – a recreation of a POW hut like the ones in The Great Escape. Free entry, must be booked in advance.

Cambridge University colleges and gardens

The colleges are one of the biggest draws for people when visiting the city. During this year’s Open Cambridge, several will open their doors to reveal all manner of treasures. Choose an introduction to Selwyn College’s history and a look at its archives (10 September) or visit The Lawrence Room at Girton College (14 September) and discover Roman and Anglo-Saxon grave goods discovered on the college site itself that sit alongside artefacts from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, donated by college members over the years.

Avid gardeners will enjoy the gardens of Girton College (6/9/12/13 September), Wolfson College (10 September) and Robinson College (13/14 September) on a guided tour with their respective head gardeners.

College libraries

One of the most significant surviving renaissance libraries in Europe, Corpus Christi’s gorgeous Parker Library will also be open (12 September). Visitors will have a chance to see the old library and view the current exhibition with some of the collection highlights on display. There will be demonstrations of how manuscripts were assembled and are conserved today by the Cambridge Colleges’ Conservation Consortium.

The Old Library at St John’s College (14 September) will open its doors for one day only with an exhibition on the relationship between paper and plants, plus a show-and-tell corner exploring the various ways in which books are made.

One of Christopher Wren’s great masterpieces of architecture, the Wren Library at Trinity College, will also be opening its doors (6/7/9/10/11/12/13/14 September). This year sees a special exhibition celebrating the bicentenary of Byron’s death, exploring his network of friends, the connections across the publishing landscape of his works, and the routes of his travel. There will also be a specially curated exhibition of books about plants and gardening in the early modern world.

Walking tours of Cambridge

Cambridge Green Guides are offering tours exploring the city’s rich history in film, sound and cinematography (13 September), Cambridge’s first suburb and home to the once biggest fair in Europe, Old Barnwell (9/12 September) as well as a tour of the history of Cambridge in French (12/14 September).

For those interested in a different tour of Cambridge, the Uncomfortable Cambridge tour (6/8/10/12 September) engages with historical memory and highlights diverse stories in the city centre. These tours, led by university researchers, provide attendees with an introduction to the city, while going beyond the traditional narratives by highlighting histories of race, gender, class, and disability, while raising uncomfortable questions about the lasting legacies of empire.

Visit opencambridge.cam.ac.uk to book.