Pandorica The Pandorica was a prison hidden under Stonehenge . It was built to hold the Doctor and ensure the safety of the Alliance . Despite being described time and again as the " perfect prison " by the Eleventh Doctor , it also proved to be " easy " to open from the outside ; Rory Williams , on instruction from the Doctor , opened it with the sonic screwdriver . History . According to legend , the Pandorica was the prison of a warrior or goblin who dropped out of the sky and tore the world apart until a good wizard tricked it and locked it up . The Pandorica was actually a prison built by the Alliance for the Doctor to stop him from inadvertently destroying all of creation in every Universe . They believed the Doctor would be responsible for the destruction of existence itself . They used the lure of the Pandorica to trap him . There were many layers of security in the Pandorica including deadlocks , time stops and matter lines . It even had a restoration field to stop the Doctor from dying , which the Alliance believed a form of escape . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) After the Alliance trapped the Doctor in the Pandorica in 102 AD , the Auton duplicate of Rory Williams succumbed to his programming and shot Amy Pond . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) However , a future version of the Doctor was able to go back in time using River Song ' s vortex manipulator and tell Rory how he could use the sonic screwdriver to release the Doctor , as well as use the Pandorica to save Amy . By sealing the near - dead Amy inside the Pandorica , it was then kept shut until 1996 , when her younger self in the new timeline where only Earth existed came to the museum where the Pandorica was kept on a school trip . Contact with the Pandorica gave it a sample of young Amy ' s DNA , which it could use as a sample to fully revive the nearly dead adult Amy . During this time , it was moved several times . In 118 , the Pandorica was taken back to Rome under armed guard . In 420 , it was plundered by the Franks . By 1120 , it was the prized possession of the Knights Templar . In 1231 , it was donated to the Vatican under Pope Gregory IX . Sometime after , it was sold by Marco Polo . It was once put into storage in a London warehouse which was destroyed by the Blitz in 1941 . It was reportedly seen being dragged to safety from the burning warehouse by the Last Centurion , and found a short distance away , unscathed . The Pandorica was also used by the Doctor to restore the universe . Since all of the traps inside it provided the perfect barrier against the destruction of the universe , it retained several billion atoms of the original universe within , even after the destruction of the rest of creation . Operating on the same principle as cloning a body from a single cell , these atoms provided a " blueprint " for the universe when the Doctor piloted it into the exploding TARDIS which had cracked all of time and space . The atoms from the Pandorica combined with the energy of the TARDIS ' explosion to restore every point in time and the universe . Doing so caused the cracks in time to close and allowed Amy to remember her family and the Doctor - all erased by the cracks - back into existence . ( TV : " The Big Bang " ) Other references . As a " sneak preview " , River mentioned to the Eleventh Doctor that he would see her again " quite soon . When the Pandorica opens . " The Doctor responded that that was a fairy tale . ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " ) When Flemming was reading River ' s diary , he mentioned this adventure , remarking that it sounded " exciting " . ( TV : " The Husbands of River Song " ) As recorded by the Testimony , the " Imp of the Pandorica " was a name for the Doctor given his entrapment in the prison . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) Exterior . The Pandorica looked like an image of Pandora ' s Box on a book found in Amy Pond ' s bedroom . It was lined with a very ornate and complex set of security tumblers that glowed green when they were being unlocked , likening the Pandorica to a heavily vaulted safe . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) Interior . The interior was a small room with a chair in it and a set of manacles built into the arm rests . When someone was placed on the chair , the exterior would close and the manacles would lock around their wrists to shackle the person to the chair , sealing them in tightly . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) Known inhabitants . The Eleventh Doctor was put in the chair by the Alliance to stop him from destroying the universe . Using the sonic screwdriver given to him by a future version of the Doctor , the Auton copy of Rory Williams opened the Pandorica and released him . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) The Doctor and the Auton duplicate of Rory put Amy in the Pandorica while she was dying . She was restored when her seven - year - old self touched the box , causing it to open . Using its restoration field , the Pandorica resurrected the older Amy after it got a DNA sample from the young Amelia . ( TV : " The Big Bang " )