Church of Saint George, Lalibela

The Church of Saint George, known in Amharic as Bete Giyorgis, is a monolithic church carved downward out of a single mass of volcanic rock in the town of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia. It is the best preserved and most visited of eleven rock-hewn churches at Lalibela, all cut from the living rock during the reign of the Zagwe king Gebre Mesqel Lalibela around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, traditionally said to recreate a symbolic new Jerusalem for Ethiopian Christian pilgrims unable to reach the Holy Land. Carved in the shape of a Greek cross when viewed from above, the church descends into an excavated courtyard, with its interior columns, windows and reliefs cut directly from the surrounding rock rather than built up from separate stone. Lalibela's churches remain active places of worship for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.