Stonehenge v Colosseum: which ancient monument is for you?

By Amy Cooper

First, let's deal with the megalith in the room: not everyone gets Stonehenge. To be fair, that's understandable; in a world of shiny Insta-sexy spectacles, the ancient stone circle remains defiantly basic.

To the unconvinced, it's a collection of large stones amid fields somewhat appropriately named Salisbury Plain. By today's supersized standards, it isn't even that big - the largest standing sarsen is nine metres tall. Burj Khalifa it ain't, and yes, the Colosseum could pop Stonehenge in its toga pocket with barely a bulge.

And yet this Neolithic relic regularly tops polls of best-loved British destinations, more popular even than Buckingham Palace.

To experience it, millions still brave the weather, the queues and the risk of encountering an office worker in a robe who at weekends calls himself Aglain of Azeroth.

The world's most famous prehistoric monument still commands awe. Why? One word: mystery.

In our high-visibility, Google-everything era, genuine enigmas are almost extinct, and Stonehenge is perhaps the last and greatest of them all, stretching 5000 years back to an age about which we guess more than we actually know.

Its truths are lost in the mists of time.

No matter how long you gaze at them, those implacable slabs refuse to reveal their secrets. Instead, they tantalise with mind-boggling questions.

Who put them here, and why? Was Stonehenge a temple, a hospital, a cemetery, a massive prototype clock or a spacecraft landing pad?

Was it built by Druids, Danes, Romans, Phoenicians or Merlin (the wizard, not the entertainment company)?

To stand beside these towering boulders, wondering, sends shivers down your spine.

The visitor centre offers fascinating insights, but they're only clues. There's no narrative of emperors, lions or chariots, but perhaps there were dragons and warlocks. Anything seems possible in this ancient and weird place.

The more you ponder, the more you marvel at Stonehenge's mere existence.

It was built before the wheel was invented. An average sarsen stone weighs 20 tonnes. How the henge did those Neolithic tradies transport and raise them with just ropes and wood?

Bath, one of England's prettiest cities, is nearby and there you can see beautiful Roman-built baths. But even they don't inhabit your imagination the way Stonehenge does long after your second pint of Heel Stone Best Bitter.

Experts estimate its construction took 20 million hours, a feat so incredible that some claim only giants or aliens could have done it.

Maybe they did. Stonehenge's magic is that we don't know, and we never will.

By Mal Chenu

Like many of the battles that took place in the Colosseum arena, this is an unfair fight. We're comparing one of the great feats of Roman engineering with a bunch of Neolithic dominoes.

But Stonehenge is at least a couple of thousand years older than the Colosseum, and the unknown sun-worshippers who put it together did not have the benefit of trigonometry, cranes, aqueducts or slave labour.

So let's just compare them as tourist attractions; as places to spend your time and money.

And in this assessment, with apologies to all the Celtic druids who look forward to reading Explore every weekend, the Colosseum triumphs.

There's something deliciously surreal about seeing architectural and engineering phenomena for the first time in real life. And particularly so when you realise the photos and videos didn't do them justice.

I've felt this standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Sydney Opera House, the MCG and Dolly Parton, to name but a few.

And so it is for the Colosseum. An extensive, recently completed restoration of the oval amphitheatre's facade has made it even more spectacular, as it has for Dolly.

Known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, for the dynasty of emperors who built most of it between 69-96CE, the Colosseum towered above ancient Rome, a corollary to the incredible - and brutal - civilisation they built.