Inside Stonehenge complete, with the midwinter sun setting between the two uprights of the great trilithon, in the VR tour

Our second tour

Stonehenge: the turning of the year

A guided virtual-reality walk to Stonehenge as its builders made it, about 4,500 years ago. Visitors arrive on the shortest day of the year, stand inside the complete monument and watch what it was built to show.

Length: About 12 minutes
Languages: 7, with captions
Controls: Gaze only
Headset: Meta Quest 3

The midwinter sun sets through the great trilithon

The journey

From midwinter sunset to midsummer sunrise

Salisbury Plain, about four and a half thousand years ago, and then today.

The Avenue, on the shortest day

Visitors walk up the Avenue towards the stones in the low afternoon light, among people arriving for the midwinter gathering, past the Heel Stone and its lost partner.

The ditch, the bank and the great circle

Across the earthwork, already five hundred years old, to thirty uprights carrying an unbroken, level ring of lintels: Stonehenge whole.

The midwinter sunset

Inside, the sun goes down exactly between the two uprights of the great trilithon, more than seven metres high. This is what the monument was built to show.

Bluestones and the longest night

The story of stones brought from Wales and from the north of Scotland, then nightfall, under the stars as the builders saw them.

Half a year in a minute

Winter turns to summer. The midsummer sun rises beside the Heel Stone and its first light runs up the Avenue to the centre of the circle.

4,500 years pass

Seen from outside, stones fall and are carried away, until Stonehenge stands as it does today. Visitors walk back in among the stones as they are now.

People gathered around Stonehenge on its rise in low midwinter sunlight, with three tall stones at the entrance, in the VR tour — The midwinter gathering, in the last hour of daylight

The complete sarsen circle of Stonehenge with its ring of lintels, seen from the entrance, in the VR tour — The complete circle, from the entrance

Stars over the ring of lintels at Stonehenge at night, in the VR tour — The longest night, under the stars of the time

Stonehenge as it stands today, with fallen stones lying between the surviving trilithons, in the VR tour — The closing scene: the stones as they stand today

Stonehenge complete seen from the air, inside its circular ditch and bank, with the Avenue running away to the north-east, in the VR tour — The surveyed ground: the ditch and bank, and the Avenue beyond

Accuracy

Built on real measurements

The ground is the Environment Agency's laser survey of Salisbury Plain. Every stone standing today is placed and outlined from a published plan, and the missing ones are restored in their places. The sun's path is calculated for the place and the date, so it sets and rises where it really did, and the stars are turned back 4,500 years. The closing scene uses a 3D scan of the monument as it is now.

Where the evidence runs out, we say so. Nobody knows what the builders wore, for example, so the people in the tour are stand-ins that a curator would help us replace.

This tour is our own demonstration of what MuseumVR can build. It is not currently offered at any museum or heritage site, and it is not connected with or endorsed by English Heritage, which looks after Stonehenge.

Want a tour like this for your site?

We will build one for your museum and trial it for a week, at no cost.

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