Lalibela on Sunday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lalibela

I didn’t know what the significance of that word was till I came here to Ethiopia… And I expect that Im pretty much like most people I know in that regard. But I had seen occasionally images of an amazing little church carved out of “the living rock” in the shape of a cross…

 

And Lalibela is the name of the small town in Ethiopia where that church is located.

The town is kind of in the mid Northern area of Ethiopia and it’s a long way from anywhere… Its about 600Km from the capital of Addis Abeba and its not on any main highway and the little dirt roads that lead to the town are narrow and steep and very windy as they work their way up and down steep mountainsides through green pastoral lands and little farming villages to get to the little town.

But it seems that most tourists cant be bothered with the drive to get here and they mostly come in by aircraft to the local air-field (10am arrival every day). The tourists come to see the eleven “Rock Hewn Churches” that are all located within a couple of hundred metres of each other… They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and with good reason.

This area of Ethiopia is Orthodox Christian and has been so since the town was populate in about the 5^th century AD (that’s when Christianity came to the area. In the 9^th century AD it appears that the first “set” of churches were carved into the volcanic Tufa rock and these “churches” probably started out live as civic buildings or royal apartments or the like because they are not oriented NS/EW and their interior designs are not very ornate and don’t work particularly well as churches… Though they have definitely been used as churches for many centuries. Then in about the 12^th Century the town became the new Capital of an empire and that was when the second group of churches were built… These are all definitely built as churches (orientation and interior designs etc) and were apparently all constructed in a span of just a couple of decades. And then lastly, constructed soon after the second group is the most famous Church of St George… Its design is a little simpler than others in the second group but the execution was performed with the most precision and the result has lasted for centuries and no one who comes here to see it fails to be very impressed.

The tufa rock is not that hard as rock goes but the scale of the excavation is a wonder to see… Just as an example the small Church of St George is about 15m tall and about 10m per side. The church is three stories tall and has several rooms on each floor. And the rock area excavated around the church is about 25-30m square and 15m deep… That’s a LOT of chiselling!!!

And most of the churches are still in full use by the Ethiopian Christians (a couple are no longer in use due to significant cracks in the roofs and the danger of collapse). There are services every Sunday and the churches are all lined with carpets and have the usual assortment of religious artifacts and equipment adorning their interiors,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent a day or so here and it’s a very pleasant little town and a good place to relax… or to fix a flat tire and a blown fuse on your motorbike like I did J