Celtic Druids built Stonehenge as a religious temple around the 1st century BCE.
Stonehenge was constructed over 4,500 years ago (circa 3,000 BCE) during the Neolithic period, long before Druidic culture emerged (roughly 500 BCE). Medieval chroniclers, lacking archaeological understanding, misattributed Stonehenge to Druids. Later antiquarians and occultists perpetuated this error, linking ancient monumentality to mystical priesthoods. Modern archaeology definitively establishes a Neolithic construction date and proto-religious purposes related to ancestor veneration and celestial observation. This myth persists partly because Druids capture romantic imagination and partly because popular culture has repeatedly represented them as Stonehenge custodians.