Historical Attractions
Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela
There’s something intensely wonderful and spiritual about Lalibela, a truly amazing town located in the northern region of Ethiopia. This small village is a World Heritage site – acclaimed for its rock-hewn churches, stunning rural landscape, and devout Christianity. If faith is a mystery, there are few places in the Christian world where the mystery is deeper than in Lalibela. King Lalibela is believed to have ordered the building of 11 extraordinary churches at the end of the 11th century and beginning of the 12th. The eleven churches were each carved from a single, gigantic, block of stone. No bricks, no mortar, no concrete, no lumber, just rock sculpted into architecture. Not much is known about who built them, or why. But the faithful of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church say there’s no mystery really. The churches of Lalibela were built by angels!
Yemrehana Kristos
Located at the end of a winding dirt road 42 kilometers from Lalibela, the church of Yemrehana Kristos sits in a shallow cave where it was constructed during the 11th or 12th centuries. Built of wood, stone, and marble, the architecture is quite different from the churches of Lalibela and the cave and adjacent forest create a very tranquil setting. Near the church, on the edges of the cave's interior, lay the skeletal remains of hundreds of Orthodox Christians where they have rested for centuries.
