Qualla: Lalibela

Lalibela: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Bet Giyorgis is cut from the top down. Where most builders begin with foundations and rise from the ground, the masons of twelfth-century Ethiopia started at the surface of a pink volcanic plateau and chiselled a perfect cruciform church into the rock below - roof first, then walls, then interior, then the drainage trenches surrounding it. What they left is not a structure placed on the earth. It is a cathedral subtracted from it. And Bet Giyorgis is only one of eleven.

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Image: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lalibela: A New Jerusalem

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martijn.Munneke from Netherlands, CC BY 2.0. King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela founded the town of Roha in the Zagwe period more than nine centuries ago, intending it as a substitute for Jerusalem - a pilgrimage city for Ethiopian Christians suddenly cut off from the Holy Land. Early in his reign, Saladin captured Jerusalem from t...

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Image: Martijn.Munneke from Netherlands | CC BY 2.0

Lalibela: The Angels Night Shift

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ethiopian Orthodox tradition does not shrink from the scale of what was accomplished here. How, the reasoning goes, could eleven churches have been hewn from living rock during the quarter-century reign of one king, unless angels completed the work at night, labouring twice as fa...

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Image: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lalibela: Pink Tufa, Bare Feet

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julien Demade, CC BY-SA 3.0. The churches are open before sunrise. Arrive by 05:45 to hear the bass drums summon the call to prayer. Services begin at 05:50. You remove your shoes - you will remove them many times before the day is out - and step onto stone that pilgrim feet have worn smooth across nine cent...

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Image: Julien Demade | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lalibela: The Smell of Frankincense

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Singapore.Alice, CC BY-SA 3.0. North of town rises Dewosach, where much of the illumination of holy books was done in Lalibela's time, at an elevation of 3,670 metres. Nearer and slightly lower sits Asheten with its distinctive flat top. The name means smell in Amharic - the mesa was christened during the reig...

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Image: Singapore.Alice | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lalibela: At Altitude

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anne Saurat, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo. The town sits at 2,600 metres in the Lasta Mountains of northern Ethiopia, home to around 15,000 people. The climate is exhilarating almost year-round - dry, bright, and clear, with mountain views that open off every path. A Sunday morning draws hundreds of white-robed worshipper...

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Image: Anne Saurat | CC BY-SA 3.0 igo