In message , at 21:04:36 on Mon,
11 Feb 2008, Ian Jelf remarked:

Although Stonehenge is often described as "disappointing",

It is *much* smaller than most people imagine.
The circle may be. The monument is much more. And much bigger.

And sufficiently less visible and less well described that the average
tourist (not someone on one of your tours) will generally be unaware of
it. All they see are the standing stones.

Although that's partly because you can't get very close to it any
more (I can remember when you could wander round inside).
In fact you do go inside the monument; just not the stone circle
itself.

See above, for most visitors stonehenge *is* the stone circle.

there is a reason it is so famous.

It is very old.
Actually, compared to other monuments, the present stone circles isn't
especially old. The earthwork on certain other features are indeed
much older, though.

It's older than Roman, which is the oldest constructions most people get
to see elsewhere. (Outside Egypt etc).

When tourists come from a *State* that's only got 100 years of
history, some
thing that old is almost literally unimaginable.
To be fair, most people come from somewhere a bit older than 100 years
(even excluding any indigenous cultures. I regularly take people to
see attraction newer than many US or even Australia features, eg
Beamish, the Black Country Living Museum, Ironbridge Gorge, etc.)

I'm not sure I understand what that list of features is for. In the USA
the very oldest stuff you come across normally is "anteBellum", and
there's very little of that.

It is, as far as I am aware, absolutely unique among the stone
circles of Western Europe for having the lintels across many of the
stone uprights. This represents the absolute pinnacle of what
Neolithic to Bronze ages peoples achieved.

Very few people seem to go to Stonehenge to wonder over the
architecture.
Mine do! ;-))

I'm afraid I find it's all a bit "why did they build Windsor Castle so
close to the Heathrow flightpath". So people seem to think "oh, it's all
fallen down", rather than "gosh how wonderful it must have been when
intact". As with the Parthenon in Athens, photographs usually give a
misleading impression of how much is still intact, so when you visit,
it's a disappointment.
--
Roland Perry