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Wiltshire Heritage Museum – Stonehenge

Wiltshire Heritage museum in Devizes is home to the best Bronze Age archaeology collections in Britain, including the finds from the very first archaeological excavations at the Avebury and Stonehenge World Heritage Site. Don’t miss the artefacts found in Bush Barrow and learn about the pioneers who created the science of archaeology in Wiltshire 200 years ago.

www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk SN10 1NS

Suggested time for visit: 1h30

 

Stonehenge

Stonehenge in silhouette

Stonehenge and Avebury are respectively the most sophisticated and largest stone circles in the world. Together with the outstanding ritual and funerary monuments surrounding them, they represent an incomparable testimony to prehistoric times. Although 40 km apart, they were designated as a single World Heritage Site in 1986.

The Stonehenge part of the World Heritage Site covers 2,600 hectares and contains over 400 protected monuments. Stonehenge itself was built and used between 3000-1600 BC. It is the most architecturally sophisticated stone circle in the world, unrivalled in its design and unique engineering. A cremation cemetery in its early phase, it is aligned on the sun at the solstices, but its exact function remains a mystery. The stone circle is surrounded by hundreds of prehistoric burial mounds and by several ceremonial monuments such as the Avenue, the Cursus, Woodhenge and Durrington Walls.

Stonehenge website