The Sites: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If Chapel Hill is the "Southern Part of Heaven," then this bumper sticker's query is moot: if God is not a Tar Heel, then why is the sky Carolina blue?

Sundial, Morehead Planetarium

The nation's oldest public university, Carolina's campus really can't take a bad picture.  The past, present, and future meet on its quads and in its buildings in a way that I've never experienced on another campus and that I've felt in very few places elsewhere.  Once summer arrives, the pace slows dramatically and the energy shifts, as if the buildings themselves are breathing during the brief respite from their occupants.  When the semester is in session, the students bustle about, putting an electricity in the air that buzzes around you with their collective energy - their pride in this place is palpable.  Classes have begun again this week, the excitement of a new year in the air, with all the possibilities and opportunities that it brings, just waiting for the students to take advantage of all that lies in front of them.  It is - for lack of a better word - magical.

facade of Wilson Library

Like most places, there are hidden treasures here, patiently waiting to be discovered, such as the reading room of Wilson Library, for me second only to the reading room at the New York Public Library in its regal and stoic beauty.  The science complex and the global center embrace the pace of the new, blending together with the rest of campus in a seamless manner, so that their facades don't look harshly out of place amongst the limestone porticoes of the older buildings.

On any given day, you can find a variety of visitors to campus, wandering amongst the quads, stopping to drink from the Old Well.  They may be local residents, coming to enjoy a walk through the arboretum; they may be alumni, returning to see what has changed (much) and what has stayed the same (also much) since graduation; they may be prospective students, visiting to see whether this campus is where they will spend the next four years of their educational journey.  

Old Well, McCorkle Place

It is somewhere that speaks to a sense of place in a subtle, quiet way, with images immediately recognizable to many who've never even set foot in North Carolina, let alone wandered barefoot through the grass of McCorkle Place: the Old Well surrounded by azaleas, the Bell Tower soaring into a perfect Carolina blue sky, the arc of the Dean Dome buzzing with anticipation of that evening's game.  It is, as Charles Kuralt described it, as it should be: the University of the people.