The University of Liverpool was the city's first centre of higher education and also one of Britain's original 'redbrick' universities - those that grew up in the expanding Northern cities after the industrial revolution.
Despite its heritage, however, it is not stuck in the past, with new developments and expansion happening all the time.
Based almost entirely on a single site just to the north of the city centre, Liverpool combines the feel of a campus university without sacrificing proximity to all the action in the city centre.
Most first year students live either on campus, or in the residential halls the university owns in the leafy suburbs of Aigburth, connected by a regular bus.
Hot stuff academically, Liverpool is one of the elite 'Russell group' of universities - the UK's equivalent of the Ivy League - and has been connected with no less than 8 Nobel Prize winners.
It is amongst Britain's most respected universities in many areas from English Literature to Oceanography while it virtually invented Veterinary Science as an academic subject and is home to one of only two schools of Tropical Medicine in the UK. Liverpool University has the highest rated Physiology Department in the UK, with a Government Research Assessment Excercise rating of 5**
It also helped pioneer bringing higher education to a wider audience and does much work to encourage and assist mature students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
It's not all hard graft though, the university is also home to the largest Student's Union building in the UK, with gig venues, theatres, bars, shops and virtually everything you could ever need as a student, along with extensive sporting facilities both indoor and out.
