Visiting Ethiopia's New Jerusalem: Lalibela's incredible rock-hewn churches

My first visit to Lalibela, far and away Ethiopia's most popular tourist destination, was neither planned nor auspicious. Flying to Axum from Gonder, bad weather at our destination resulted in a five-hour layover at the Lalibela aeroport while waiting and hoping that the skies above Axum would clear enough for us to complete our journey. Much of the waiting was done in the aeroport's second floor restaurant, which my daughter - a conoisseur of Italian cuisine - recalls as serving Ethiopia's best spaghetti and tomato sauce. Also memorable was our captain holding court with the flight crew and other hangers on at a neighbouring table for the duration of our layover. His table weighed down with plates of shiro, tibs and other delicacies, taking calls on his mobile phone, and enjoying a laugh-a-minute with his entourage, the life of a pilot in Ethiopia seems a lot more fun than anything I've seen of the harried existence of flight crews in Canadian aeroports.

Lalibela aeroport

 On our subsequent - and this time planned - stay in Lalibela we again arrived at the aeroport, only this time we skipped the restaurant and headed straight out of the terminal where we were promptly met by the driver from our hotel. The fact that airport transfers are almost always included in room rates is one of my favourite features of the Ethiopian hotel sector, and it is hard to imagine better value for money than is the case in Lalibela, where the aeroport is located almost 30km from the town centre along a winding mountain road. Difficult to reach as recently as the mid-1990s, Lalibela has since become the centrepiece of Ethiopia's "historical circuit". While the tourist influx has undoubtedly brought a measure of prosperity to both the town and surrounding region - not to mention home comforts for foreign visitors - tourism-led development clearly has a downside as well. More on this later.

Lalibela Countryside

Navigating the town's peripheral sprawl, we arrived at the Lal Hotel under a light drizzle. With over 100 rooms the Lal is the town's largest hotel and a tour group favourite. However, the rainy season and travel warnings had clearly put a damper on bookings, and perhaps as a result the hotel had a desolate feel to it, like a ski resort in the middle of summer. Concretely, this meant the swimming pool had been drained, satellite TV reception cut off, all but one of the hotel's vaunted bars and restaurants were closed and water leaked into our room whenever it rained.

Biete Ghiorghis

 Of course, Lalibela is not a place you to visit for the quality of the pool-side lounge but rather the world heritage site it is built around. In this regard, stay at almost any hotel in town and chances are you're a stone's throw away from one of the town's rock-hewn churches or associated warren of canals and subterranean passages. And they are truly amazing, not only for their outstanding workmanship and the unique history they embody, but above all because of the enduring role they play in the religious lives of Ethiopian Christians. Visiting Biete Golgotha Mikael on a fasting day when the church is thronged by the faitfful, I felt halfway between the stone-carved Nabatean temples of Petra and Copacabana beach on New Year's Eve, when thousands of white-clad followers of Macumba make offerings to Iemanjá, Goddess of the Water.

Biete Medhani Alem

As is the case elsewhere in Ethiopia, Lalibela's is understudied by historians and archaeologists, especially considering the magnitude and significance of the site. While myth and tradition has more than filled the breach in scholdarship, some features of Lalibela's history are relatively uncontested. Notably, Lalibela's rock-hewn church are thought to have been built in four or five stages, between the 7th and 13th centuries. Physically, the churches form two distinct clusters: A northern group, consisting of Biete Golgotha Mikael, Biete Mariam, Biete Denagel, Biete Maskal and  Biete Medhani Alem, and a southern group, consisting of Biete Lehem, Biete Gabriel Rafael , Biete Abba Libanos, Biete Amanuel and Biete Qeddus Mercoreus. A final church, Biete Ghiorghis, stands alone a short walk from the southern cluster, and is undoubtedly the most recognizable of all Lalibela's churches (think St George's Cross).

Worshippers' shoes left outside the sanctum

Drawing on Axumite architectural traditions, the churches' consistently square or rectangular shape belies many striking and unique features, while the layout of the site - with its subterranean passages, drainage canals and assorted caves and other dark openings - fosters a sense of otherworldliness that is consistent with Lalibela's traditional representation as the "New Jerusalem". In this regard, I found it striking how the sacred and the profane mingled so seamlessly in Lalibela. On the one hand, these are very much working churches where the faithful come in their thousands on major feast days such as Orthodox Christmas. On the other, it a key income earner for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and sustains a major tourism industry and everything good and bad that this entails.

Biete Golgotha Mikael

At the time of our visit in July 2016, the entry fee for the churches was USD50 per person and USD25 for "students", with ample care taken at the visitor centre to ensure that tickets, which are valid for five days, are not shared among multiple visitors. While the visitor centre houses a quickly forgotten museum in its basement with a collection of dusty relics and a few ancient books, those interested in learning about the history and archaeology of Lalibela are advised to visit the Lalibela Cultural Centre instead. Located next door to the Tukul Village Hotel, its displays are top notch with lots of interesting context, photos and artefacts that are bound to enrich anyone's visit to Lalibela.

Biete Mariam

 As for the church themselves, what can I say that has not already been written by someone far more learned than me? Despite on again, off again rain for the two days I spent visiting the site, the experience was nothing short of remarkable. And especially memorable for me was the distinctiveness of each of the churches, notwithstanding their superficial similarities. While Biete Ghiorghis' cruciform layout has become the face of Lalibela (if not Ethiopia) among tourism promoters, the carved statues of Biete Golgotha Mikael or the majestic columns of Biete Medhani Alem are no less striking in both their beauty and craftsmanship.

Every church has its bell

At a more prosaic level, visitors to Lalibela will undoubtedly encounter the usual characters who feature anywhere in Ethiopia frequented by large numbers of foreign visitors: guides, touts and assorted hustlers. Featuring prominently in the latter group are large numbers of "grade 10" students keen on practising their English and acquiring a gift-giving benefactor in the process. That being said, the hassles in Lalibela are very mild compared with many other places around the world, and I was left a warm impression of almost everyone I dealt with. I'm looking forward to a return trip soon!

Looking towards the sanctum sanctorum

Visiting one of Ethiopia's lesser known world heritage sites: Tiya Stelae Field

World heritage site. For visitors to Ethiopia, this label most likely evokes images of grandeur and awe. Think for example of Lalibela's singularly ornate rock-hewn churches or the breathtaking landscape of Simien Mountains National Park. White the Tiya Stelae Field is equally a world heritage site, its scale is altogether more modest than that of its better known brethren.

Tiya is located about 80km south of Addis Ababa on the road to Butajira, and the trip there is memorable in its own right, as are most road trips in Ethiopia. Leaving Addis' Bole district mid-morning in a chartered minivan - an Ethiopian tourism industry mainstay on roads where 4WD is not required - we almost immediately became snarled in the capital's ever-worsening traffic. 

Roadside scene on the Addis-Butajira Highway

Weaving our way past pedestrians, bajaji (as three-wheel taxis are known locally), broken down trucks and a donkey which had decided that the middle of a four-lane road was as good a place as any to take a nap, we finally breached Addis' sprawling suburbs and emerged into the open countryside.

The landscape south of Addis is beautiful: rolling hills, lush vegetation and small farmsteads, studded with the occasional volcanic plug and (not so attractive) roadside village. Passing through one of these villages we had the memorable experience of a massively obese man walking into the middle of the road, holding out his arms and blocking our vehicle no matter how our driver tried to navigate around him. As pedestrians and their animals walked by as though nothing odd was happening, our driver finally accepted defeat and handed over a couple crumpled notes and the man went on his way.

Most people visiting Tiya on a day-trip from the capital make two stops en route. The first is the Paleolithic site of Melka Kunture. About one kilometre west of the highway down a rough track, the site apparently features a fine museum containing many impressive stone age artefacts. I say apparently because we did not get to see the museum ourselves, arriving too late in the day and finding the entrance gates already locked.

The rural landscape south of Addis is verdant and lush

We had better luck at our second stop at Adadi Maryam, which has the distinction of being the most southerly of Ethiopia's rock-hewn churches. Located on high ground about 30 kilometres west of the main road, Adadi Maryam is thought to date from the 13th century CE, and was reputedly built by King Lalibela himself. Whether this is true or not, the church remained in use for the next three hundred years, when it fell into disrepair until it was rediscovered by Emperor Menelik II in the late 19th century.

Sunday market at Adadi village

Although the church is a popular pilgrimage destination for Ethiopian Christians, there was little road traffic on the day of our visit, apart from the occasional herd of sheep and goats and a few farmers heading home after a morning spent tending to their fields. However, as the farmland gave way to the outskirts of Adadi. where the eponymous church is located, we discovered why we had seen so few people on the way in: everyone seemed already to be in the village, buying, selling or just walking about at the local weekly market. Dozens of donkeys and horses were tied up on either side of the road as we approached the market square, and soon the way forward was entirely blocked with a mass of people. Yet our driver crawled along, with people moving out of our path good-naturedly, and soon we arrived at the church gates.

Adadi Maryam Church

Having paid our 5USD entry fee we clambered down slippery stone steps to the church proper. Having visited Lalibela earlier in our trip I will admit to being a little disappointed by the much less finely carved stonework. However, in other respects Adadi Maryam is impressive. At 20 metres long and 16 metres wide the church is imposing in its size and layout, with large (carpeted) chambers leading into the maqdas, or Holy of Holies, where only priests may enter. However, even without delicately wrought stonework or elaborate wall-paintings, what struck me most about Adadi Maryam was the sense that it was above all a working church, where people come to worship as they have for centuries, with no effort to sanitize or commodify the experience.

Interior of Adadi Maryam Church

Leaving Adadi Maryam, the rest of the trip to Tiya took the better part of an hour. The world heritage site sits at the end of an unpaved but well signed road about 200 metres east of the main highway. Surrounded by farmland and thickly vegetated with tall grass and shrubs, there is almost nothing that gives away the site's significance as one approaches. No aspiring tour guides or souvenir hawkers, no roofing or other site protection - just a modest hut where a local man sell trinkets and a tiny ticket building where we were given a laboriously written receipt after paying our USD6 entrance fee.

"Welcome to Tiya Ethiopian World Heritage Site"

The Tiya stelae field, entered via a brightly coloured gate in a low-slung barbed wire fence, consists of 46 standing stones, regarding which remarkably little is known. Erected between the 10th and 15th centuries CE, they are of much more recent vintage than the obelisks of Aksum, yet their meaning and significance remains shrouded in mystery. The stelae vary in height with the tallest reaching five metres, and they include both anthropomorphic and phallic shapes. Most also bear elaborately carved symbols, variously reminiscent of swords, leaves and human figures.

Tiya stelae field

Despite being designated a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1980, very little archaeological work has been undertaken at Tiya. However, evidence of mass graves of individuals whose remains bear signs of violence suggest that the stones may be grave markers for warriors killed in battle. Other finds in the area include Middle Stone Age tools as well as several tombs.

Tiya stela detail

On the day of our visit, we had the ruins almost entirely to ourselves, and traipsing across the site it was easy to imagine all manner of ancient artefacts waiting to be found beneath the uneven ground. The stelae themselves were striking for their recurring motifs, which must have been fiendishly difficult to carve in the hard rock. Not for the first time in Ethiopia we were struck by the country's remarkable historical legacy, which is as rich as that of any country in the world, yet so much remains unknown or unqueried by professional archaeologists and historians. While the protection afforded to Tiya through its world heritage designation is an important first step, clearly that there is much more to be done to preserve and study this remarkable site.

Sword motif on Tiya stela

Globalization, cheap lemons and the crumbling away of a world heritage site

Globalization and production outsourcing have been blamed for many woes - Donald J. Trump's recent attacks on China being a classic of the genre - but I've never seen a story this week linking cheap foreign fruit to the possible destruction of one of the world's most iconic world heritage sites.

The Amalfi Coast, located in southern Italy in the Province of Salerno, was inscribed on UNESCO's world heritage list in 1997. With its picturesque villages and dramatic landscape, the region has long been a favourite destination for both Italian and foreign tourists.

Amalfi Coast (photo credit: Gilbert Bochenek

However, leading geologists have reportedly issued a warning that the coastal zone is at risk of crumbling into the sea. The problem is that the region's lemon farmers, who have built and maintained a system of stone retaining walls known as "lemon terraces" over hundreds of years, are abandoning their groves as lemon cultivation becomes a losing proposition in the face of cheaper lemons grown abroad.

The impact, according to geologists, is a mounting risk of landslides, and with it the natural beauty on which the region's world heritage designation and associated tourism depends.

Lemon orchard, Amalfi Coast (photo credit: Jensens)

Without wishing to romanticize what is undoubtedly back-breaking and sometimes dangerous work, it is sad to think that traditional lemon farming on the Amalfi Coast is disappearing, and with it the distinct character, history and perhaps even the physical landscape of a uniquely beautiful region.

Foamhenge saviour wanted as day of reckoning for styrofoam Stonehenge approaches

Replica world heritage sites seem to springing up around the world at an ever increasing pace, as globalization stimulates interest in iconic monuments and entrepreneurs seek ways to capitalize on this interest. Witness for example the outlet mall being built in Dubai that is modelled on San Gimignano, a UNESCO-designated town in Italy's Tuscany region.

However, not everyone seems intent on making money from such ventures. A case in point is Mark Cline's "Foamhenge", an exact copy of the megaliths which have stood in a circle at Stonehenge in Wiltshire since prehistoric times. Mr. Cline erected his monument at Natural Bridge in Virginia in 2004, and the site has become a popular tourist attraction.

The original Stonhenge... (photo credit: Ben Schumin)

Sadly, it appears that Foamhenge's days may be numbered. Not only has the styrofoam begun to deteriorate, media are reporting this week that authorities have ordered Mr. Cline to move the monument by July 2016, as the area will be incorporated into the new Natural Bridge State Park.

...And its styrofoam copy (photo credit: Wigulf)

Anyone interested in ancient megaliths take note: Mr. Cline is reportedly looking for someone who would be willing to host the monument for the continued enjoyment of tourists who can't make the trip across the ocean to see the real deal.

Combatting "heritage pollution" in UNESCO-designated Valleta, capital of Malta

In a delightful turn of phrase, media are reporting this week that "heritage pollution" obscuring views of historic fortifications in Valleta, capital of Malta and world heritage site since 1980, will be removed. The "pollution" in question are billboards erected by the country's two main political parties.

City of Valleta (photo credit: Lleonidas)

 

While the commitment to remove the billboards is certain to be welcomed by tourists wishing to take unobstructed photos of the city's famous walls and bastions, it also underscores the power of social media in mobilizing public opinion in support of heritage promotion and preservation.