Oxford University’s founding philosophy of the humanities are grounded in Dominican principles. Someone describes the building’s central atrium as “a cathedral”...It’s hard to shift the sense the Schwarzman is a secular space in search of spiritual ritual.

We’re seated at long, curving tables – concentric circles of people each sitting quietly in front of a small glazed bowl. A woman rings a bell, exhorts us to extend our bowls in cupped hands to receive nettle tea, and then to drink in silence as the choir in the gallery above sings a newly composed anthem. This isn’t a church, and it isn’t a Eucharist: but it sure feels a lot like it. After a £185 million investment and just two years of impossibly swift construction, Oxford University’s Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities is – as of last weekend – open to both students and public.

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