London ? A heritage group announced an $88 million plan Wednesday to rescue Stonehenge from the 20th-century clutter that has sprung up around the ancient circular stone monument.

Branded a “national disgrace” by some lawmakers as it now stands, Stonehenge is flanked by highways, and visitors trying to imagine its original splendor do so with the steady hum of traffic in the background.

Sir Neil Cossons, chairman of English Heritage, left, Anthea Case, director of the English Heritage lottery fund, center, and Chairman of the National Trust Charles Nunneley discuss plans for Stonehenge, near Salisbury, England. English Heritage announced an 8 million plan Wednesday to renovate the ancient monument.

The planned changes to the site in Wiltshire, southern England, would reclaim land around the stone circle by closing one highway and building an underground tunnel for a second road. A new, less obtrusive, visitor center would replace the current building near the monument.

“These funds are the key to reuniting archaeological landscape rich with ceremonial monuments spanning over 10,000 years,” said Sir Neil Cossons, chairman of English Heritage, the partially government-funded body responsible for preserving the country’s historic environment.

The last in a sequence of circular monuments built between 3000 B.C. and 1600 B.C., Stonehenge is one of Britain’s most popular tourist attractions and a spiritual home for thousands of self-styled druids, New Age followers and mystics who gather there for the summer solstice, the northern hemisphere’s longest day and the first day of summer.

Improvement plans have been discussed ever since a committee of lawmakers called the site complete with unsightly fencing, an intrusive visitor center and portable toilets in the visitor parking lot a national disgrace a decade ago.

Under the new structure, visitors will still not be able to walk right up and touch the stones that was stopped in 1978 but they will have access to far more of the 1,700 acre National Trust-owned site.

Designed by award-winning Australian architects at Denton Corker Marshall, the visitor center would be buried into the landscape, making it appear, from above, simply as lines on the ground. It is expected to be completed by 2006.