Travelers to the region, be advised: The Yale campus is a not-to-be-missed attraction, according to the 1998 "Yankee Magazine Travel Guide to New England."
The Yankee guide provides readers with a comprehensive vacation-planning tool and daily reference. In fact, for the past 25 years, it has been the most widely distributed and best-selling guide to the six-state region.
Each year, the travel editors, along with a corps of "insiders" in each state, select the very best from the state's attractions, food, lodgings and shopping, and designate them as places that are "sure not to disappoint."
"We are delighted to select the Yale University campus as one of this year's 'Editor's Picks,'" says Mel Allen, editor director of the Yankee travel products. "With so many unique and diverse places to choose from, we felt Yale University is especially worthy of a traveler's stop."
The campus' status as a popular tourist attraction is no surprise to the staff of the Yale Visitor Information Center, which helps welcome thousands of tourists to the University each year. Summer is the center's busiest time, says its manager, Shirley Johnson. "It peaks in August. Last year, over 3,000 people took our campus tours in August alone."
The center offers free guided walking tours of campus daily. The excursions, which are led by specially trained students, begin at the Visitor Information Center, located at 149 Elm St., and include stops in the residential colleges -- notably Branford's courtyard, Davenport's common room and Pierson's tower-- the historic Old Campus, the Gothic Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which is composed of over 100 slabs of translucent marble.
Tours are held at 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday-Friday and at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Special group tours can be arranged for a nominal fee by calling the center at least two weeks in advanced at 432-2300.
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