Lalibela

Where it is

Lalibela is a town in the Ethiopian highlands of Amhara, at around 2,500 metres, on a slope of soft red volcanic tuff. That rock is the reason the place exists in the form it does: it is soft enough to cut with hand tools and hard enough to stand once cut. The churches here were not built. They were excavated — trenches cut down into the hillside to isolate a block of rock, which was then carved from the outside in and hollowed out, so that a finished church stands below ground level in its own pit.

The land and water around it

• The volcanic tuffplateau

  Soft, workable, and consistent enough to carve a roof and columns from a single mass. It is also porous, so water gets in — which is the conservation problem, and the reason for the shelters over several churches.

• The Jordan Riverriver

  The name given to the stream running through the site, part of a naming scheme that maps Jerusalem onto the landscape — a Golgotha, a Tomb of Adam, a Mount Tabor. The topography was renamed rather than reproduced.

• The Lasta highlandsmountains

  Steep, high country that kept the region defensible and hard to reach. Isolation preserved the site and also kept it out of most external accounts until the sixteenth century.

Its history, in short

The churches are traditionally attributed to King Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty around the turn of the thirteenth century, in an account that says they were made to give Ethiopia a Jerusalem of its own after the routes to the original became difficult. Modern study suggests a longer and messier story — several phases of cutting over centuries, some structures possibly beginning as fortifications or as earlier rock-cut work and later adapted to churches. They have never been ruins: eleven churches remain in continuous liturgical use by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the town is a major pilgrimage destination, especially at Christmas.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• Bete GiyorgisTraditionally 13th century

  A cross-shaped church cut from a single block in its own square pit, entered by a trench. It is the most photographed and probably the last of the group to be cut.

• The tunnels and trenchesTraditionally 13th century

  The churches are linked by cut passages and drainage channels, so the complex works as a single excavated landscape rather than a set of separate buildings.

• The priests' librariesContinuous

  Illuminated manuscripts in Ge'ez, held and used by the churches themselves rather than deposited in a national collection. The books are part of the liturgy, not part of an exhibition.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereLalibela is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest

Check yourself

• How were the churches made?

  Excavated downward from the surface and hollowed out

  Trenches isolate a block of tuff, which is then carved outside-in — so a finished church stands below ground level in its own pit.

• Why do canopies stand over several of the churches?

  Because the tuff is porous and rain is destroying it

  A temporary measure from 2008 that is still in place, and now part of how the site looks.

Worth arguing about

• A Jerusalem made by renaming a landscape rather than copying one. What does that say about what a pilgrimage site actually needs to be?
• The shelters are ugly and they are working. How much appearance should conservation be allowed to cost?

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