University Circle is a district in the neighborhood of University on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. It is home to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall (home to the Cleveland Orchestra), the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cleveland Cinematheque, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the Cleveland Botanical Garden, historic Lake View Cemetery, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.

Encompassing approximately 550 acres (220 ha) the University neighborhood is bordered to the north by the Glenville neighborhood, to the south by the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood, to the west and southwest by the neighborhoods of Hough and Fairfax (also known as Midtown) and to the east by the cities of East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights. University Circle is member of the Global Cultural Districts Network.

While the population of University Circle ranks on the lower end of Cleveland's 36 defined Statistical Planning Areas (SPAs), it ranks near the top in importance to the city's economic sector. Neighborhood businesses and institutions provide the city with more than 30,000 jobs in a variety of fields, including averaging 1,000 new jobs per year since 2005. Nearby attractions draw approximately 2.5 million visitors annually. As the neighborhood's name implies, higher learning is a major part of the culture of University Circle, with over 13,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students attending the area's various institutions. University Circle Inc., a not-for-profit corporation established in 1957, serves as the neighborhood chamber of commerce, providing many administrative and quasi-governmental functions for the area, including security, transportation administration, and marketing. University Circle has its own full-service police department to provide security and patrol the area.

In 2021, USA Today ranked University Circle #1 as the "Best Arts District" in America. Forbes ranked University as one of America's Prettiest Neighborhoods; with high praise for its symphony orchestra, museums, botanical garden, planetarium, high-end foods, world class culture, and walkability. In a 2007 USA Today article entitled "10 great places to discover Italy in America", Mario Batali was quoted as saying, "Corbo's Bakery has the best cassata (cake) I have tried in the USA." The article listed Cleveland's Little Italy as a top ten Little Italy in America. Askmen.com ranked Cleveland's Little Italy #3 out of 10 in their list of "Top 10: Little Italies".

Points of interest in the University Circle neighborhood include:

University Circle was known during the early 19th century as Doan’s Corners, after Nathanial Doan, a member of the Connecticut Land Company, who settled his family and started a community there.

The name "University Circle" began to take shape in the 1880s. Western Reserve University moved its campus from Hudson, Ohio, to Euclid Avenue in 1883. Case School of Applied Science moved from Downtown Cleveland to a site next to WRU in 1885. Their relocation led to the birth of an educational center and the creation of a new community called University Circle, named in part after these new institutions—but also the circular street intersection and trolley turnaround located at Euclid Avenue and Doan Brook Boulevard (Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard today).

By the 1890s, the Western Reserve School of Design for Women (Cleveland Institute of Art) moved to University Circle, and the concept of developing a world-class arts and cultural center came to life. The concept became more concrete when Jeptha Wade, a trustee of Western Reserve University, set aside land for the Cleveland Museum of Art to be built in the Circle, which required the Cleveland Zoological Park, now known as the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, to be relocated to its present-day location of Old Brooklyn. The Historical Society (Western Reserve Historical Society) joined these institutions before the start of the 20th century.