Mindanao State University, founded in 1961 on the southwestern shore of Lake Lanao, is the largest university in the southern Philippines and the cultural and intellectual anchor of Marawi. The campus is enormous (about 1,000 hectares), green, and pleasant to walk through — modernist 1960s academic buildings, the King Faisal Mosque on a rise, a small commercial strip, and a long lakeshore drive.
The campus survived the 2017 siege; it is the only part of the city most foreign visitors actually get to. The university also runs the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Arts, which holds the most important collection of Maranao material culture in the Philippines.