Oldest Universities in the World
About This Dataset
Oldest Universities in the World
Universities ranked by their founding date, recognising the oldest continuously operating institutions of higher education. The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is widely recognised as the world's oldest university in continuous operation, followed by Oxford and the University of Salamanca.
Analysis
University of Siena (1,240), University of Naples (1,224) and University of Padua (1,222) take the top three in Founded (Year). Values run from 1,240 at the top to 1,088 at the bottom in Founded (Year), a spread of 152. First and second are separated by 16, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Below the top two the field is tightly packed: the remaining 6 run from 1,222 down to 1,088 Founded (Year).
Source:
Wikipedia
Key Findings
🏆
University of Siena leads in Founded (Year) with 1,240.
📊
Average Founded (Year): 1,170 · median: 1,180.
↔️
Gap: University of Siena is 1.1× larger than University of Bologna.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 8 observations
- Measure
- Founded (Year)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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