Stonehenge

Stonehenge stands on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, one of England's most flat and open landscapes, making the ring of massive standing stones visible from miles away. Erected in several phases between approximately 3000 BC and 1500 BC, the monument consists of a circular arrangement of sarsen standing stones — each weighing up to 25 tonnes and transported from the Marlborough Downs 25 miles away — and smaller bluestones believed to have come from the Preseli Hills in Wales, over 150 miles distant. The trilithons (two uprights capped by a horizontal lintel) define the inner horseshoe arrangement and represent an extraordinary feat of Neolithic engineering. The most famous feature is the alignment: on the summer solstice (around 21 June), the rising sun shines directly along the avenue and through the monument's centre. Year-round, the standard visitor experience follows a path around the outer perimeter, approximately 10 metres from the stones. The visitor centre, 1.5 miles from the monument, houses a substantial archaeology museum with finds from the surrounding landscape, including Bronze Age burial goods, alongside scale model reconstructions of how the monument may have appeared in its heyday. The surrounding chalk downland is dotted with hundreds of burial mounds and the cursus, a Neolithic ceremonial enclosure. A typical visit lasts two to three hours including the exhibition and the shuttle ride to the stones.