Named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978, they are eleven temples carved into rock and are in Ethiopia. The lack of written tradition and the age of the buildings have given rise to multiple theories about their construction, although none have been confirmed.
Myth gives way to reality
Ethiopian Christians during prayer. Ethiopia claims to be the first Christian state in history, since the fourth century. PHOTO: Anne Saurat (name of owner)
In 1939, an Italian architect named Monti Della Corte reached, after 50 hours of walking, the mysterious churches of Lalibela, deep in Ethiopia unknown to European explorers. Turbulent years passed on the back of his mule. Mussolini’s fascist Italy had forcibly conquered the kingdom of Ethiopia , the only African territory hitherto spared from the urges of colonialism, and as often happens when a territory is conquered, the intricate Ethiopian culture was in danger of falling apart.
And the archaeologists came to their rescue, resisting this abandonment. But eighty years have passed since that first ride and the eleven churches of Lalibela are no longer a mystery . They ceased to be that legend told by the oldest Ethiopians to foreign merchants, when they stopped to refuel in Addis Ababa. Like so many remote places on earth, just as has happened in the Cambodian temples of Angkor Wat, or the historic ruins of Karakorum in Mongolia, the cities that were once the subject of fantastic stories full of magic have been spat back into reality, stripped of all mysticism throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. There is no room for magic or fantasy in this new world of reality, and scholars from all over the world are constantly searching for a reasonable explanation for the construction of these churches and many other things.
Celestial workforce
Who shaped the eleven churches of Lalibela out of bare rock? In the absence of a written tradition that would reveal the mystery, the Ethiopians said that the angels. The myth explained it, that they went down to earth to build them all in one night. It seems to be the only possible explanation for these great works of architecture, humble in front, almost empty inside, but carefully carved more than nine centuries ago in what seemed like an impassable rock. How else? Nobody ever thought that the human being would be capable of such feats, just as there are still those who think that the pyramids of Giza are the work of extraterrestrials.Church of Bet Libano (Saint Lebanon), built around the 13th century. The cracks crossing the facade explain the recent work to restore it.The legend endures until the European researcher enters them, educated from the unshakable Aristotelian reason, and carefully inspects, magnifying glass in hand, the centuries-old churches. Entire teams of archaeologists and experts come to them, each with their reasons printed in their culture magazines. It was the Templars who built them. It was this or that king. How could they be angels! Exclaim the most knowledgeable. If so, they would not be collapsing, they would last forever. If true, two of the temples would not be covered by grotesque steel plates placed by UNESCO to stop their erosion. Angels! they exclaim again, eyebrows raised in disbelief. no, no angels. This is the work of a king who was called Gebra Maskal Lalibela , a powerful Ethiopian monarch from the 12th century.
So many dollars thrown in the air to try to answer a question that should not matter to us so much. Who cares if it was angels, kings, or just pious men who chiseled the rocks? If they didn’t leave the printed evidence anywhere, it doesn’t make much sense who to believe, the case is sealed until someone finds the text that clarifies it for us. For now it matters that they are there, still standing after so many years, and having two hands to feel them with during the visit. Inhaling their moist aroma, having the opportunity to walk – or pray – inside them, that’s what matters. What if we decide to think that it was angels, kings and monks alike who were in charge of building them?Each one in their own way, either giving their faith to the hands that carved them or being the hands themselves.
Templo de Biet Ghiorgis
The church of San Jorge seen from above. Carved into the rock itself, it dates from the end of the 12th century.
Of the eleven churches in Lalibela, there is one in particular that stands out above the rest. It is the Biet Ghiorgis (Saint George) , an impressive monolith carved out of rock below and with a cross-shaped roof. To get to it you need to take off your shoes, before going down the stairs that lead to its entrance. Going down the stairs, the humidity and the coolness in the lower layers of the earth impregnate the skin and make it difficult to breathe , and this strange sensation of heaviness can prove the reason for that discarded theory of the builder angels. Barefoot, you descend step by step following a narrow row of local faithful, most of them men leaning on robust prayer sticks, also barefoot and more accustomed to the abrupt humidity.
What for us is an experience worth a thousand likes on Instagram , or an entire memory card of our camera, what for us is the impossible dream that we wrote down as young people on our list and today we have finally managed to fulfill, is for them as natural as visiting the bars of Malasaña for a Madrilenian . And how curious it would be to find on that staircase some Ethiopian eager to get to Spain, jump a fence or save a beach and stroll through the bars of Malasaña.
Fleas can be another type of aesthetic
The aesthetic side of life enters into customs. Without aesthetics, custom is lost because it is the setting that surrounds customs, the tools that put it closer to hand. The lights in the bars are as common to us as the threadbare carpets inside the temple are to them . Carpets heavy with humidity, whose colors begin to fade over the years and so old that no one remembers who placed them there. And fleas, that can be normal too. It is that thousands, millions of fleas swarm the temples of Lalibela, happily settling and nesting in these temples of soggy stone and forgotten rugs . That’s why we roll up our pants into our socks and they don’t wear socks. It is not better or worse.It is not a question of hygiene or culture. It is custom, plain and simple, the beautiful side of the differences that mark our lives. Perhaps they would also roll up their pants in Malasaña to avoid being splashed by the mixed drinks.

Group of faithful before entering one of the Lalibela temples. You can see the prayer sticks that will be raised repeatedly to the sky during the prayer.
That is why the foreigner will fervently deny that the Ark of the Covenant is kept in one of these temples and the local will vigorously affirm it. Is the Ark really here, as some say? It will be, if one wants to think about it. Was it the angels who carved the rock? They will be, if one is willing to believe it.
There are small corners of the planet, full of mystery, in which the traveler will still be free to believe this or that, always barefoot feeling the cold of the stone flood him. Doubt gives rise to myth. Certainty overwhelms everything with its irrevocable reality. Days like today, in which certainty has conquered everything it could devour, finding places like Lalibela allow us to doubt again, to give free rein to our amazing capacity to imagine . We get to enjoy the humidity, the fleas, the cracked stone, and finally understand that it doesn’t matter if the hands that shaped these eleven temples were human or heavenly. We are equally grateful to one and the other .