Top Universities for Classics & Ancient History in 2018

Top Universities for Classics & Ancient History in 2018

Craig OCallaghan

Updated January 16, 2020 Updated January 16

This year, the QS World University Rankings by Subject have been expanded to include two new subjects, one of which is classics & ancient history.

50 universities from around the world feature in this first-ever classics ranking, with 16 different countries represented. Sapienza - Università di Roma has the honor of being the best university in the world for classics, and the rest of the top 10 can be seen below along with a regional breakdown.

Top 10 universities for classics & ancient history, based on the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2018

1

Sapienza - Università di Roma

Italy

2

University of Oxford

United Kingdom

3

University of Cambridge

United Kingdom

4

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Germany

5

Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)

France

6=

Harvard University

United States

6=

Leiden University

Netherlands

8

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Germany

9

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

Germany

10

Princeton University

United States

Top universities for classics & ancient history in the United States and Canada

Although only two American universities manage to break into the top 10, there are nine more included in this year’s ranking. Cornell University are just one place below Princeton in 11th, with the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) (15th), Yale University (17th) and University of Chicago (20th) all in the top 20.

Canada has just one institution in this year’s ranking, the University of Toronto, which is ranked 33rd.

Top universities for classics & ancient history in Europe

As you can see above, most of the top universities for classics & ancient history hail from Europe and this is replicated further down the table. 36 of the 50 universities included this year are European, with the majority coming from Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (eight institutions per country).

Outside of the top 10, the next best universities in the UK are the University of St Andrews (ranked 14th), UCL (University College London) (18th) and King’s College London (KCL) (21st).

In Italy, the next top universities after Sapienza are Università di Pisa (12th) and Universitá degli Studi di Roma - Tor Vergata (13th).

Half of Germany’s featured universities are in the top 20, with three in the top 10 above. The next best-ranked universities are Universität Freiburg in 19th, and Freie Universität Berlin in 22nd.

Other top European universities are Greece’s Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 16th and Belgium’s Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 24th. Outside the top half of the ranking, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Denmark and Spain are all represented.

Top universities for classics & ancient history elsewhere in the world

Only two universities in this year’s classics & ancient history ranking are from outside Europe, the US and Canada. The first of these is Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) which is ranked 39th and is the sole Latin American university included.

The final institution is the only Asian university in this year’s ranking. Japan’s Kyushu University is ranked joint 46th alongside Spain’s Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM).

This article was originally published in February 2018 . It was last updated in January 2020

Written by

As editor of TopUniversities.com, Craig oversees the site's editorial content and network of student contributors. He also plays a key editorial role in the publication of several guides and reports, including the QS Top Grad School Guide.

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