For us today the university is an institution that claims the transmission of superior knowledge on behalf of a privileged place, a historical destiny and a professional category represented bz it. But what is this historical destiny? How did its image take shape? What is the specificity of the university, from its beginnings until now? We can define more clearly this specificity by investigating the origins of the university, trying to find those essential elements that are present, explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously, in everything that the academic environment signifies. For this, we shall first see how the university was born, what meanings the word university includes, what goals it initially assumed, how the first universities appeared and which was their activity. Then we will see who were those working in universities, what was their ideal, which were their sources and how they differentiated themselves from other social and professional categories. Finally, we try to grasp how the today image of the university is affected.