Except for a number of inexpensive eating places, the sum of visi­tor interest in Palo Alto is the 8,000-acre campus of Stanford University, a privately-run body of learning founded by railway magnate Leland Stanford in 1885 and specializing in producing conservative-minded lawyers, doctors and scientists, some of whom have contributed to the inventions which reputedly bring the university $5 mil­lion a year in royalties.

Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, a co-architect of New York’s Central Park, a grand driveway leads into the university’s mission-style Main Quad. A climb to the top of Hoover Tower – named after Herbert Hoover, one-time U.S. President and Stanford student – will reveal the far-flung nature of the sprawling campus and leave you in no doubt that further exploration is best undertaken with the aid of the free shuttle buses which leave from the Main Quad.

Works by Rodin in the Cantor Sculpture Garden and the Asian and Egyptian collections of the Cantor Arts Centre of Stanford University (www.museum.stanford.edu) are well worth seeing, but for anyone who knows nothing about particle physics but would like to, the graduate-guided tours of the SLAC (Stanford Linear Accel­orator Centre) (https://www6.slac.stanford.edu) – a device which fires electrons along a two-mile course – will be the undisputed campus highlight.