Gambier is almost all Kenyon College, and that is exactly why it works. The village is tiny, but its hilltop campus, gravel Middle Path, bookstore, gallery, and wooded edges give it the texture of an old liberal-arts town rather than a generic stop on the road.
The pleasure here is gentle: walk through Kenyon's stone and brick campus, look into The Gund if an exhibition is on, then drop down toward the Kokosing River for a bike ride or a walk on the rail trail. The Brown Family Environmental Center adds prairie, wetland, and forest trails just beyond the main village.
Gambier is not a destination to cross Ohio for on its own. But if you are already near Mount Vernon, Newark, or the middle of the state, it is a good spare-day detour: pretty, self-contained, and more memorable than its size suggests.