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Sunrise in Stonehenge: Every year during the summer solstice, thousands of onlookers make the pilgrimage to the Stone Age monument
Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, thousands of people celebrated the summer solstice at the Stone Age monument Stonehenge in England on Tuesday.
As the sun peeked over the clear horizon just before 5am on the longest day of the year, cheers erupted from those present, Britain's PA news agency reported.
According to police in the county of Wiltshire, around 6,000 visitors took part in the event, which is regularly attended by people who call themselves pagans or "druids" and perform mock rituals.
During the pandemic, the summer and winter solstices at Stonehenge were broadcast online.
At the summer solstice on June 21, the sun rises exactly behind the so-called »Heel Stone«, the entrance to the millennia-old, world-famous stone circle, and the sun's rays fall in the middle of the monument.
The stones are aligned exactly to the position of the sun on the summer and winter solstices.
The two days are believed to have been celebrated at Stonehenge in England for thousands of years.
What the stone colossuses of the Neolithic Age were originally intended for is still unclear.
Scientists suspect that Stonehenge could have served as a sanatorium or observatory, for example.
czl/dpa