The new visitor centre at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain is opening on 18 December in time for the winter solstice on 21 December. Everyone involved in the £27million Stonehenge Environmental Improvements Programme, the largest capital project English Heritage has ever undertaken, has been sworn to secrecy ahead of the opening, although there is a promise that there will be Sarsen stone that you can actually touch in the centre, even though you will not be able to touch the stones of the henge itself.

The visitor centre is designed by Denton Corker Marshall as an environmentally sensitive and fully accessible building with a high BREEAM rating. The first exhibition there is called Set in Stone? How our ancestors saw Stonehenge. It charts more than 800 years of ideas and debate about the henge and explores who built Stonehenge and when. It features many objects on loan from national museums.