Campanile and Central Campus

The Campanile was constructed in 1897 as a memorial to Margaret MacDonald Stanton, Iowa State's first dean of women. Campanile folklore states that an ISU student is not a "true Iowa Stater" until having been kissed underneath the Campanile at the stroke of midnight.[7] This rite of passage lives on during "Mass Campaniling" at Homecoming, VEISHEA, or other occasions, during which time hundreds or even thousands of students gather near the campanile to continue this tradition.

Iowa State's central campus was one of only three colleges to receive the American Society of Landscape Architects medallion award given to outstanding landscape sites. The book, The Campus As a Work of Art, proclaimed Iowa State to have one of the 25 most beautiful campuses in the country.

You'll discover more than just nature's beauty on a walk through campus. Iowa State has the largest public art collection in the nation with an estimated 2,000 works of art on campus.