Debre Berhan Selassie Church, Gondar

Debre Berhan Selassie — "the Mountain of the Light of the Trinity" — stands on a low rise at the north-eastern edge of Gondar, the city from which Ethiopia's emperors ruled for two centuries. From outside it is a modest rectangular building, set within a stone enclosure wall punctuated by twelve rounded towers, said to stand for the twelve apostles; the larger gate tower is said to represent Christ as the Lion of Judah. Nothing outside prepares a visitor for what is within.

Step through the door and the church turns into a painted book. Every wall is covered in murals in the bright, flat colours and wide almond eyes of Ethiopian painting: the Holy Trinity, scenes from the life of Christ, ranks of saints, the torments of hell. Then look up. The wooden ceiling, divided by beams into panels, is filled edge to edge with the winged faces of angels, row after row of dark eyes gazing down — the image that has made the church famous far beyond Ethiopia. The church is traditionally credited to Emperor Iyasu I, who reigned from 1682 to 1706 and gave it a bell received from the Dutch governor-general of Batavia; its priests mourned him for a month after his murder. Scholars, though, have shown that the present rectangular building replaced an earlier round church, whose foundations — about 30 metres across — have been found beside it, and that the paintings may be considerably later than the traditional date, with research placing them in the early nineteenth century.

Its survival is part of its legend. When Mahdist forces from Sudan sacked Gondar in 1888 and burned its churches, Debre Berhan Selassie came through; local tradition holds that a swarm of bees rose from the compound and drove the attackers off. The paintings were conserved in the 1970s and early 1980s by an international team that also trained Ethiopian restorers, and the church is part of the World Heritage property of Fasil Ghebbi and the Gondar monuments.

Getting there

The church lies on the north-eastern outskirts of Gondar, about 2 km from the city centre, within walking distance of the town or a short taxi ride. Gondar Airport (GDQ) is about 11 km away.