Monolithic churches in Lalibela
— — eleven churches cut down into the rock.
Not only on a wall.
“Eleven churches carved downward into the red volcanic tuff of the Lasta mountains in northern Ethiopia, attributed to King Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Bete Giyorgis — the church of Saint George — is cut as a cross-shaped block in a pit, fifteen metres deep, reached by a sloping trench. Pilgrims in white shamma cloth move through the trenches at Genna, the Ethiopian Christmas, in numbers that fill the rock. The churches are still in use as living Orthodox parishes, not as a museum.
Monolithic churches in Lalibela, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lalibela sits at about 2,500 metres in the Lasta mountains of Ethiopia's Amhara Region, roughly 645 kilometres north of Addis Ababa. The eleven monolithic and semi-monolithic churches were cut downward into the red volcanic tuff during the reign of King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty, traditionally dated to the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978 among the first twelve sites named worldwide and remains an active centre of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Each church was carved as a single piece of rock, isolated from the surrounding tuff by trenches and then hollowed from above. Bete Giyorgis is shaped as a Greek cross in plan, with a roof flush to the surrounding ground and walls dropping fifteen metres into the pit. The northern group is connected to the southern by a long subterranean tunnel. Building marks remain inside the chambers, along with painted murals and the carved Aksumite window frames the masons knew from older traditions.
The churches' busiest day is Genna, the Ethiopian Christmas, celebrated on January 7 by the Julian calendar still in use by the Ethiopian church. Pilgrims arrive on foot from across Amhara and Tigray, often walking for days, and stand through overnight services held in the trenches. Timkat, the feast of Epiphany on January 19, is the other great gathering. UNESCO has flagged structural risk to several churches; protective shelters were erected over four of them in 2008 and remain in place.