Stonehenge✓

Stonehenge is a prehistoric stone circle on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, about 2 miles west of Amesbury and roughly two hours' drive from London. English Heritage manages it, and a timed ticket covering the shuttle, the visitor centre exhibition and the path around the stones fills two to three hours.

Stonehenge stands on chalk downland about 3 kilometres west of Amesbury and about 13 kilometres north of Salisbury. It began around 3100 BC as a circular bank and ditch, and over the next 1,500 years Neolithic and early Bronze Age people rebuilt it several times. Together with Avebury and the surrounding ritual landscape it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.

The great sarsen stones were raised between about 2600 and 2400 BC. Research published in 2020 traced most of them to West Woods, about 25 kilometres to the north. The smaller bluestones came from Pembrokeshire in west Wales, about 240 kilometres away, and a 2024 study showed that the Altar Stone came from northeast Scotland, about 690 kilometres away. How the builders moved them is still debated.

The outer circle originally had 30 upright sarsens capped by a continuous ring of lintels. Inside stood five trilithons in a horseshoe, two uprights topped by a lintel, rising to more than 7 metres, with the biggest trilithon stones weighing up to around 50 tonnes. The lintels are fixed with mortise-and-tenon and tongue-and-groove joints copied from woodworking, a technique not found at any other stone circle.

The monument is aligned on the solstices. On the longest day the sun rises close to the Heel Stone outside the circle, and at midwinter it sets through the gap of the great trilithon. Cremation burials show the site was used as a cemetery for at least 500 years. The wider landscape includes the Avenue, the Cursus, hundreds of burial mounds and the large Neolithic settlement and timber circle at Durrington Walls.

English Heritage cares for the stones and the National Trust owns much of the surrounding land. Tickets are timed and cheaper when booked online in advance, and a shuttle runs from the visitor centre, opened in 2013 about 1.5 miles away, to the circle. Visitors walk around the stones on a path outside the circle. Only special access visits and the summer and winter solstice gatherings go among them. Allow two to three hours, including the exhibition and the reconstructed Neolithic houses.

Listed opening hours run from 9:30 to 19:00, with last entry at 17:00, and the site closes only on Christmas Day. Without a car, take a train to Salisbury, about 1 hour 30 minutes from London Waterloo, then the hourly tour bus from outside the station. The shuttle, visitor centre, car park and viewing areas are wheelchair accessible, and two wheelchairs can be borrowed at the ticket office.