Take A Tour Of The Most Beautiful College Campus In New York City

This features is a part of our Best Colleges In America series.

Columbia University ranked in the top five on our list of the Best Colleges in America and the Ivy League school also has a classically beautiful college campus - with the added bonus of being in New York City.

Much of Columbia's architecture reflects the university's commitment to liberal education. All students must go through the school's famed Core Curriculum, a series of classes aimed at creating critical thinkers.

The university was originally founded by royal edict in the mid-18th century as King's College. These royal ties can still be seen in Columbia's crown logo, which appears on flags and gates all over the campus.

Columbia's first class consisted of nine students and one professor, who apparently closed the then-Wall Street based school to go fight the Revolutionary War. The campus was then relocated uptown, to where 30 Rockefeller Plaza is now, before moving to its current location in the heart of uptown Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood.

We recently decided to explore Columbia and see its stunning campus firsthand. In order to get the full experience, we sat in an on information session and followed around a campus tour.