Thousands of visitors have been welcomed to the long-awaited Stonehenge exhibition and visitor centre in its first month of operation, since opening to the public on Wednesday 18 December.

The virtual 360-degree experience which lets visitors ‘stand in the stones’ before they enter the gallery. This three-minute film, based on state-of-the-art laser scan images of the stone circle, transports the viewer back in time through the millennia and enables them to experience the summer and winter solstices. Credit Clare Kendall/English Heritage.

For the first time, visitors have been given a proper introduction to one of the world’s most important monuments, with over 250 objects of international importance on display, including the reconstructed face of an early Neolithic man. The centre is the first phase of English Heritage’s £27million project to transform the visitor experience of this iconic site, made possible by a £10m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and substantial gifts from the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Linbury Trust and the Wolfson Foundation.