{"id":283507,"date":"2019-08-06T14:37:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?guid=a33e5f2a195df444e35c104fbddd3bc9"},"modified":"2026-10-16T11:49:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T15:49:05","slug":"rough-guides-lalibela-100-best-places-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/283507","title":{"rendered":"Rough Guides names Lalibela among its 100 best places on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Travel publisher Rough Guides named Ethiopia's Lalibela among the 100 Best Places on Earth in a bucket-list book due out on Sept. 1, 2019, nazret.com reported.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"size-large wp-image-837864\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bete-giyorgis-lalibela-2012.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Bete Giyorgis, the Church of St. George, in Lalibela, November 2012\" \/><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Bete Giyorgis, the Church of St. George, in Lalibela, November 2012 (Bernard Gagnon \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The guide called Ethiopia \u201can enigmatic and utterly beguiling country,\u201d pointing to its injera-based cuisine, its ancient language and Amharic script, and its Orthodox Christian festivals and religious buildings.<\/p>\n<p>It described Lalibela's churches, carved out of red rock below ground some 900 years ago, as \u201can astonishing feat of engineering.\u201d Each January, it noted, the tunnels and staircases linking the 11 churches fill with thousands of worshippers dressed in white for a 12-hour Christmas mass.<\/p>\n<p>UNESCO inscribed the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela as a World Heritage site in 1978. It says the 11 monolithic churches, about 645 kilometers from Addis Ababa, are attributed to King Lalibela, who set out to build a \u201cNew Jerusalem\u201d after Muslim conquests halted Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land.<\/p>\n<p>UNESCO lists Biete Medhani Alem as probably the largest monolithic church in the world and notes the cruciform plan of Biete Ghiorgis, the Church of St. George. It also warns that water damage has left most of the churches in critical condition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20201208121445\/https:\/\/www.nazret.com\/2019\/08\/06\/ethiopias-lalibela-among-100-best-places-on-earth-to-visit-in-2020\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nazret.com, via Wayback Machine<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/list\/18\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Travel publisher Rough Guides named Ethiopia&#8217;s Lalibela among the 100 Best Places on Earth in a bucket-list book due out on Sept. 1, 2019, nazret.com reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":837864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bete-giyorgis-lalibela-2012.jpg?fit=1280%2C903&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1bKH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283507"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837876,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283507\/revisions\/837876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}