The sarsen stones standing on Salisbury Plain were raised around 2500 BCE, yet their arrangement remains one of archaeology's enduring puzzles. Each upright weighs twenty-five tons; the lintels above them were shaped with mortise-and-tenon joints, a woodworking technique translated into stone. The bluestones, smaller pillars weighing up to four tons each, originated in the Preseli Hills of Wales—a distance of two hundred and forty kilometres. How Neolithic communities transported them remains debated, though recent geochemical analysis has narrowed the quarry sites to specific outcrops. Stonehenge's axis aligns with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, suggesting astronomical or ceremonial purpose. The monument evolved over fifteen centuries: the earliest phase, around 3100 BCE, comprised a circular earthwork and timber posts. The stone circle as it stands today was completed by 1600 BCE. Excavations in the twentieth century revealed cremation burials within the ditch, indicating the site served as a cemetery for elite lineages. The broader landscape includes the Avenue, a processional pathway marked by parallel ditches, and the Cursus, a linear earthwork extending three kilometres east to west. Today Stonehenge receives over one million visitors annually. English Heritage, which manages the site, completed a visitor centre in 2013 that houses five hundred archaeological objects, including polished stone axes and antler picks used to excavate the ditches. The exhibition hall sits one and a half miles from the stones; a shuttle bus ferries visitors across the grassland, preserving the monument's visual isolation. Entry is timed to manage capacity, and early morning half day tours from London secure priority slots before the main crowds arrive between eleven and three. The stones stand within a roped enclosure to prevent erosion, but the scale is immediate. The outer sarsen circle originally comprised thirty uprights capped by a continuous lintel ring; seventeen uprights remain standing. Inside, five trilithons—pairs of uprights with a lintel—form a horseshoe open to the northeast. The tallest trilithon reaches seven metres. Lichen patterns on the weathered surfaces shift with the seasons, and the chalk downland stretches unbroken in every direction, offering a rare sense of England's prehistoric scale.