Who needs Venice when Oxford is on our doorstep?

Dreams of Venice, or Bruges, or the total joy of stepping on to the Eurostar to Paris, fill the long winter nights.

Of course, in part this is down to the excitement of being abroad, but it is also thanks to the pleasure of a wraparound architectural backdrop unsullied by commercial development and mid-century town planning.

But save time, save money and do it this evening — go to Paddington or Marylebone station and get on a train to Oxford. Because an hour away is one of Britain’s three contenders for European city of utter beauty (the others are Bath and Edinburgh).

Nowhere else is such a stage of world-class architectural treats concentrated into such a small area and so easily enjoyed. The one fly in the ointment is the walk from the hideous railway station (shortly to be replaced by one larger and still worse) to the centre of town, but it takes only five minutes and serves to make turning the corner into Beaumont Street more exciting.

This is the city’s answer to Georgian England and, with the classical elegance and lavish gardens of Worcester College at your back, head east to St Giles’, the Ashmolean and medieval Oxford.

The colleges you pass have a gatehouse (or two) through which you can peer at the quads and velvet lawns within, but most afternoons you can usually enter for free. There are more than 30 colleges, some more thrilling than others (Magdalen, Christ Church, Oriel, Keble and Merton are five good ones, but you could so easily pick five or 15 more).

For true jaw-dropping beauty walk into Radcliffe Square from the High Street. Cobbled underfoot, the square’s composition is dominated by the domed Radcliffe Camera, while facing you are St Mary’s Church, Brasenose and All Souls Colleges — 14th, 17th and 18th century respectively. Everything is built in limestone of varying shades of yellow, from butter to mature cheddar, into which are carved lavish decorations in whatever architectural language the date of building dictated.

Walk on and work through the colleges to the largest and most architecturally lavish — Christ Church. At the centre, its chapel is the city’s cathedral and outside its west door is Tom Quad.

Here are the remnants of Thomas Wolsey’s Cardinal College. It was incomplete at his demise and so bears only the promise of what would have been the grandest cloister in the country. It is broken on the west by Christopher Wren’s gothic fantasy of a domed gatehouse. Behind are the grand, classical Peckwater and Canterbury Quads — reminders that in the 18th century young English gentlemen expected glamour commensurate with their status as the future rulers of the world.

The waters may not be lapping on the shiny flanks of your gondola but you have walked the most beautiful streets in England.

Oxford by Matthew Rice is published by White Lion Publishing