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 5th century AD (that’s when Christianity came to the
area. In the 9th 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 12th 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
