How much cultural tourism can we stand?

Long haul begins on Salisbury Plain

Slowly but surely, the realisation has dawned that Britain's greatest prehistoric monument is in a shameful state. Stonehenge is flanked by two busy A-roads and an ugly concrete visitor centre with sprawling car parks. It is, as the Commons Public Accounts Committee pointed out a few years ago, "a national disgrace".

The shame is compounded by the realisation that there is an alternative. For two years the Government's conservation agency, English Heritage, and the National Trust have been presenting a vision in which the stones stand alone and unencumbered in a gently rolling chalk grassland, the A303 and A344 and the visitor centre all closed and grassed over.

For Stonehenge consists of more than a few rings of stones. It stands amid 10 square miles of an officially designated World Heritage site scattered with prehistoric features - the great avenue from the henge itself, the cursus, tumuli and barrows.

The opportunity to realise the vision exists because the Department of Transport already has plans for the A303, which links the M3 to the M5, Exeter and the West Country. The stretch running past Stonehenge is single carriageway, heavily congested and due to become much more so. If it needs widening, then why not divert it away from the stones at the same time?

But as a special planning conference that began in Salisbury yesterday discovered, life is never that simple. Finding a route that satisfies local and national interests and which the Government judges to be affordable is proving extremely difficult.

The conservationists' ideal - to run the A303 under the site through several miles of tunnel - is ruled out by costs of around half a billion pounds. Later this week English Heritage, which looks after the stones and runs the existing visitor centre, will publish its own proposals for diverting the A303 around the north of Stonehenge. It advocates a short stretch of tunnel which would add about pounds 30m to the cost and go under some of the most important archaeology.

Local councils are more concerned about the impact of a diverted road on local villages. Both Wiltshire county council and the town council for nearby Amesbury told yesterday's conference that they are opposed to all the proposed diversions of the A303. They want it upgraded along its present route, which runs less than 200 metres from the stones.

The Department of Transport's road building arm, the Highways Agency, did not put forward any tunnelling in its latest proposals for a northerly diversion of the A303, launched in September, because they were "unaffordable".

This week's conference is intended to find areas of agreement between the different national and local interests involved. Meanwhile the formal statutory process of deciding how to upgrade the A303 lumbers on. A public inquiry still has to be held. On past form it will take years for a final decision to be made, but until it is, long-term plans for improving the public presentation of Stonehenge cannot be finalised.

So English Heritage is trying its hardest to influence and quicken the process, working closely with the National Trust, which owns most of the World Heritage site land around Stonehenge. They are determined to realise their vision of an open prehistoric landscape in which the public may roam. The hope is that a way can be found to let far more people actually walk right among the stones - something that has been denied to the great majority of visitors for the past 10 years because of fears of damage.

The renaissance of Stonehenge is a gigantic tourist project. Paying visitor numbers, now running at 700,000 a year, could rise to well over 1 million. An investment of many tens of millions of pounds will be necessary, including a new visitor centre and a hotel some two miles away. Unsurprisingly, English Heritage is drawing up a bid for lottery funding from the Millennium Commission.

Nicholas Schoon

Radical response to global deluge

As an inquiry grapples with the issue of what to do with vehicle congestion around Stonehenge, one of Britain's most popular ancient sites, the larger issue of how our heritage is to survive ever greater inundations of tourists becomes more and more pressing.

Inundation is happening here and now. London has run out of hotel rooms, Heathrow has run out of tarmac, and the mainland Chinese haven't even started arriving yet. Consider the tens of thousands of Japanese who troop around Western capitals today. Think of the impact made already by Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and by Koreans. Now multiply all that by 10: that gives some indication of the mighty tide of tourism we will face from mainland China alone by the early years of the next century.

They will flock through Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, and the effect will be merely decorative. But they will also go to the National Gallery, the V&A, Stratford-on-Avon and Stonehenge. A minority - but a stunning number of people all the same - will go on to the Lake District, too.

But this is not just a problem for the future. Under the press of numbers, many tourist experiences are already being destroyed. Everyone gets to see the picture, the monument, the palace - but no one gets to see it properly, and the sheer numbers put the object in jeopardy. Everyone goes to Venice, but all you can think about while you are there are the jams of people seeing it with you.

The result is the progressive closing-off of sensitive sites. No one today can climb the Tower of Pisa, walk among the columns of the Parthenon or the stones of Stonehenge, or explore freely the colleges of Oxford. To our children, such experiences will be as mythic and improbable as driving on traffic-free roads or looking round unlocked country churches. The danger is that more and more of the planet's cherished places will suffer the same fate: disappearing under immense crowds, then being "rescued" with the result that no one is able to enjoy them at all.

Allowing the tourist market to take its course unimpeded makes no more sense than allowing loggers to have their way in Amazonia. For any particular monument, natural or man made, there is an optimum number of people who can enjoy it to the full at any given time. Mona Lisa, five; Stonehenge, 50; Venice, perhaps 10,000. The task ahead for those who administrate such places is devising ways that will permit access to the right sorts of numbers, so that each person who pays their entrance fee will do so confident that they will be able to enjoy it to the full, in the same way that they enjoy the theatre or cinema, confident of having a seat with a view.

A pioneering way of regulating numbers was recently introduced by the National Trust. Faced with overwhelming crowds at Uppark, its 17th century stately home near Chichester, which has experienced a surge of popularity since being rebuilt after a catastrophic fire, the trust instituted a system of "time ticketing", where visitors must look around during the time specified on their ticket. It is the first time such a scheme has been implemented on trust property, and it is proving a success. The inevitable wait is richly compensated by the luxury of enjoying the house almost as if one lived in it.

It is a form of rationing that is already widely employed in the United States, and it is likely to find increasing favour here, too. Ancient sites, with their numinous atmosphere, so easily spoiled by hordes of people, are suitable cases for treatment. Instead of keeping everyone at such a great distance that they hardly feel they have visited the place, as happens at present at Stonehenge, far smaller numbers arriving at specific times might be allowed to roam among the stones as they did in the past.

The idea will be extended to sites of outstanding natural beauty. The Lake District disappears under tens of thousands of pairs of boots - and suffers disastrous erosion at the same time. Some form of rationing will surely be adopted in the next few years. We will grumble and moan about the restrictions, but once we arrive and taste the lonely beauty of the place, we will be won over.

The challenge of the future will be to allow all who want it the most intimate possible contact with our heritage, while making sure that future generations will be able to enjoy it in the same way. Those twin goals will be impossible without a widespread and intelligently administered form of time ticketing.

Peter Popham

KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

Visitors per year: 333,000

Problem: tourists disturb a working environment.

Solutions: an entry fee was imposed to limit numbers. The college grounds, but not the chapel, are closed during exam time and a tourist liaison officer has been employed to control tourism.

LEANING TOWER OF PISA, ITALY

Visitors per year: 1m

Problem: the tower had to close in 1989 because of flimsy foundations - built on waterlogged clay and sand - rather than tourist congestion.

Solution: due to reopen next year, after being strengthened with steel cables, but visitor numbers will be restricted.

TAJ MAHAL, INDIA

Visitors per year: 720,000

Problems: tourists rub their hands on inlaid flowers on tombs in the crypt, causing the growth of a fungus which blackens the marble. Local industry and traffic create smog which stains the building yellow

Solution: remove heavy industry from the vicinity.

Top 10 historic and cultural sites in UK

1 British Museum, London - 5,896,692 visitors per year

2 National Gallery, London - 4,301,656

3 St Paul's Cathedral, London - 2,600,000

4 Tower of London - 2,407,115

5 Canterbury Cathedral - 2,250,000

6 Tate Gallery, London - 2,226,399

7 Westminster Abbey, London - 2,200,000

8 York Minster - 2,000,000

9 Natural History Museum, London - 1,625,000

10 Windsor Castle, Berkshire - 1,090,668