Dug Down

1. Why would you build a church by digging down instead of up?
2. Lalibela, Ethiopia. Eleven churches carved down into the rock, each cut from a single stone, in the twelfth century.
3. You reach the roof first. Then you dig the walls, the windows, the doors, the floor, all downwards.
4. Nine hundred years later, priests still hold services inside, and pilgrims still walk the trenches between them.
5. What would you build if you had to dig it?

05). Lalibela. A plateau of red rock under a high sky. From above we watch a cross-shaped church appear by subtraction: a trench cut down around it, stone by stone, the roof first, then the walls, the windows, the doors, all downwards, until a church stands in a pit with a cross on its roof. Pilgrims in white walk the trench; a priest with a cross stands in the doorway.