Stonehenge
Salisbury Cathedral
Bath - Roman Baths
Bath - Royal Crescent
Bath Abbey

The purpose of Stonehenge, the world's most famous stone circle, remains a mystery. Its origins go back as far as the Pyramids. What today's visitor sees are the mighty remains of a sequence of monuments erected between 3000 and 1000 BC. Most well-known are the trilithons, large door-frame-shaped arrangements, made up of two standing stones, topped by a lintel stone which is actually fixed by mortice-and-tenon joints. The stones are aligned so that on the midsummer and midwinter solstices the sun shines straight through the circle onto the central Heel Stone.

The soaring spire of Salisbury Cathedral is England's tallest at 123 metres (404 feet). A magnificent piece of architecture, the Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1258 and is unique for its sense of harmony. The Cloisters and the Chapter House are outstanding and the library holds one of the four copies of the Magna Carta. The Cathedral Close is a beautiful, walled precinct of splendid houses dating from medieval times to the 18th century.

Bath owes its prosperity to its hot springs, unique in Britain, and first capitalised upon by the Romans who constructed a great bathing complex there.

In AD 973, Bath Abbey was the site of the coronation of Edgar, first king of All England. The present Abbey, dating from the 15th century, is famous for its magnificent fan vaulting and monuments.

During the 18th century the presence of the flamboyant Richard "Beau" Nash helped to make Bath one of England's most fashionable towns, while the Palladian architecture of John Wood and his son turned it into one of the country's most coherent and beautiful cityscapes.

The Roman Baths Museum houses the finest Roman remains in Britain and Bath's Georgian masterpieces - the Pump Room, the Assembly Rooms, the Circus, the Royal Crescent and the Florentine-style Pulteney Bridge - remain in a marvellous state of preservation.