No visit to South Bend is complete without at least checking out Notre Dame, after all, the top three things to do on TripAdvisor are on campus.  It is full of beautiful architecture, majestic buildings, and the famed Basilica of the Sacred Heart and Golden Dome on top of the Main Building. Listed at #11 and also on the Notre Dame campus is the Snite Museum of Art which next to the Studebaker National Museum, was one of my favorite things on this trip.

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The University of Notre Dame campus was founded in 1842 by a young French priest from the Congregation of the Holy Cross, Edward Sorin, and chartered by the Indiana legislature  in 1844.  A University only in name during the first decades of its existence, it included “religious novitiates, preparatory and grade schools and a manual labor school, but its classical collegiate curriculum never attracted more than a dozen students a year in the early decades.” The University now spans 1250 acres with 143 buildings and is organized into four undergraduate colleges — “Arts and Letters, Science, Engineering, and the Mendoza College of Business — the School of Architecture, the Law School, the Graduate School, and 14 major research institutes. Enrollment for the 2012-13 academic year was 12,126 students overall and 8,475 undergraduates.”

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