Utrecht the central railway station. Utrecht hosts several large institutions of higher education. The most prominent of these is Utrecht University (est. 1636), the largest university of the Netherlands with 30,449 students (). The university is partially based in the inner city as well as in the Uithof campus area, to the east of the city. According to Shanghai Jiaotong University's university ranking in 2014, it is the 57th best university in the world. Utrecht also houses the much smaller University of Humanistic Studies, which houses about 400 students. Utrecht is home of one of the locations of TIAS School for
Utrecht than 50 years before it was demolished in an uprising in the early stages of the Dutch Revolt. In 1579 the northern seven provinces signed the Union of Utrecht, in which they decided to join forces against Spanish rule. The Union of Utrecht is seen as the beginning of the Dutch Republic. In 1580, the new and predominantly Protestant state abolished the bishoprics, including the archbishopric of Utrecht. The stadtholders disapproved of the independent course of the Utrecht bourgeoisie and brought the city under much more direct control of the republic, shifting the power towards its dominant province Holland. This