Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela

Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela tickets: which one to buy

One ticket, bought at the office by the northern group, covers all eleven churches and is valid for several days, which matters because seeing them in one push is exhausting. The price is high by Ethiopian standards and is the main cost of a visit. A licensed guide is effectively compulsory and is hired at the same office for a daily rate; the churches are linked by trenches and tunnels that are impossible to navigate sensibly alone, and the priests expect an introduction.

Shoe minders wait at each entrance for a small tip. Most visitors fly to Lalibela from Addis Ababa, an hour by air, and stay two nights; overland trips take days. Tours sold from Addis bundle flights, hotel, guide and ticket, and the two-day version is the shortest that works. Photography inside is permitted and a small fee is sometimes asked. Tickets are sometimes checked again at individual churches, so keep the paper with you throughout your stay.

Visiting Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela: what to see

King Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty is said to have built these churches in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to make a new Jerusalem in the Ethiopian highlands, and the local river is named the Jordan. They were not built but subtracted: workers cut down into the red volcanic rock, freeing blocks from the bedrock and then hollowing them out, so that four churches stand completely free of the mountain with roofs at ground level. Bete Giyorgis, cut as a perfect Greek cross 15 metres deep, is the one on every poster and is reached by a sloping trench.

The northern group centres on Bete Medhane Alem, the largest monolithic church in the world, surrounded by 36 columns. Inside, the churches are dim, hung with old rugs, and priests display processional crosses to visitors. They are not ruins: white-robed worshippers pray in the trenches at dawn, and the whole site is in daily liturgical use. A tunnel between Bete Gabriel-Rufael and Bete Merkorios is walked in complete darkness for about thirty metres, representing the passage from hell to heaven, and guides ask visitors not to use lights.

Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily, with the churches closing around midday for a few hours in some seasons and services filling them in the early morning. Dawn is the best time and the reason to stay overnight: the trenches fill with pilgrims and the light rakes across the rock. The dry season from October to March is the practical window. Genna, Ethiopian Christmas on 7 January, brings tens of thousands of pilgrims and is extraordinary, but accommodation must be booked months ahead and the churches are impassable.

Altitude is 2,480 metres, so the sun burns and the evenings are cold. Shoes must be removed at every church, so wear something easy and bring socks, because the floors are covered in old carpet. Allow two full days. Protective shelters erected over several churches are ugly in photographs and are gradually being replaced. The town itself is small, at the end of a long climb from the airport road, and evenings are quiet; several tej houses serve honey wine and play traditional music for visitors.