In Ethiopia, at an altitude of 2.5 kilometers above sea level, the town of Lalibela is located. This city is not only a famous tourist attraction, but also a place of incessant pilgrimage. And all due to the fact that there are Christian churches carved in stone. Many of them have the design and names of Jerusalem buildings.
At the beginning of its history, the town was very small and was called Roja. The city was upset by one of its rulers named Lalibela. According to legend, the king got his name after a whole swarm of bees flew in during his birth and surrounded the baby. The mother of the newborn took this as a sign that her son would become none other than the king of Ethiopia. And already posthumously, King Lalibela was canonized.
During his life, the ruler led a righteous life and lived for some time in Israel. But after Jerusalem was captured by the Muslims in 1187, the king returned to his country. There he decided to rebuild a new Jerusalem - the capital of Christianity in Ethiopia. That is why many buildings and churches in the city bear the corresponding names and repeat the appearance of buildings in Jerusalem.
Despite the fact that Ethiopia is a poor country, it is one of the oldest Christian countries in the world. Perhaps because of the lack of funds for building materials, the Ethiopian builders decided to use their natural resource - mountains. Therefore, they began to carve temples right in the rocks. But even modern researchers are surprised at how hard and painstaking work the Ethiopians had to do.
Local Christian residents have a beautiful legend about this. It tells how a whole army of angels came to the aid of the great king Lalibel. They then, according to myths, and built all these amazing temples, and it took them only one night. According to archaeologists, the construction of the entire complex would now require about forty thousand specialists.
It is difficult to spot the temples from a distance. At one time, this made it possible to preserve Christian shrines safe and sound. You can see them now by the endless crowds of pilgrims who gather at the entrance every day. There are passages between the churches, also carved into the rocks. There are even such narrow passages that two people cannot always pass.
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Many objects in the city bear biblical names: Churches of Sinai and Calvary the Sorrowful Way, Mount of Olives. Even the river that flows in the city is named Jordan. The city is home to the world's largest monolithic temple - the Church of the Savior of the World. Some believe the Ark of the Covenant is hidden somewhere in Lalibela's dungeons.
The temples amaze with their engineering performance, majestic appearance and rich interior decoration. In one of them, carved reliefs are painted with multi-colored paints and decorated with gold. Each of the temples is unique in its own way - various styles were used in their construction. Here you can see Egyptian arches and Arab windows, Maltese, Greek and Latin crosses, stars of David, swastikas, images of the sun, ancient symbols of fertility and animal silhouettes.
Among the local temples there is a functioning one - it is called Bet Giorgis and is the most graceful and at the same time almost the most preserved monolithic church in Ethiopia. Also, during the construction of the temples, an artesian geological system for supplying water to the top of the mountain range was laid - this is where the amazing Ethiopian Jerusalem is located.