THE city council will finalise a twinning agreement with Italian city Padua at the weekend.

Lord Mayor Colin Cook will visit northern Italy to formalise Oxford's links with the university city.

Padua and Oxford city councils agreed to link up last May but this will seal the deal on a seventh formal twinning partnership.

Last October, Oxford agreed to twin with Polish university city, Wroclaw.

It also hopes to agree to build formal links with Ramallah in the West Bank over coming months. All three of those partnerships have been approved by the city council's executive board.

When they have all be formally agreed, Oxford will have eight twin cities. That will be far more than others of a similar size. Cambridge, for example, has just two.

Oxford has a proud tradition of twinning. It was one of the first cities to twin with European cities following the end of World War Two.

The first was Leiden, in the Netherlands, and it formally linked with Bonn in Germany in 1947. Both partnerships are formally celebrated with squares in Oxford city centre.

Oxford is also twinned with Grenoble, in France, after a link was agreed in 1989.

It is also a twin city of Perm, in Russia, after formally agreeing to link up in 1995, and Leon, Nicaragua.