Lalibela

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!