Ethiopian Architecture

Ethiopian architecture is most distinctively represented by its rock-hewn churches, carved directly downward out of solid volcanic bedrock rather than built up from the ground with separate stones, a technique that produces a complete building, walls, roof, windows and interior columns, from a single continuous mass of rock. Its best known group is the eleven medieval churches of Lalibela, traditionally attributed to the reign of King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and said to have been conceived as a New Jerusalem for Ethiopian Christians unable to make the journey to the original holy city. The most celebrated single church in the group, Bete Giyorgis, or the Church of Saint George, is carved in the shape of a Greek cross and cut roughly twelve meters down into the surrounding rock, its cruciform roofline visible only once a visitor descends into the trench cut around it. Lalibela's churches remain active places of worship today and were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, recognized as an outstanding and still functioning achievement of Ethiopian Orthodox Christian building tradition.