Ethiopia

Biete Maryam

A church made by taking stone away At Biete Maryam, architecture begins with subtraction. Walls, columns and openings belong to a mass of rock shaped into a church, rather than assembled as an ordinary masonry building. This reversal gives Lalibela its particular power: the ground is both the material of the monument and the setting around it. Maryam, the House of Mary, invites attention to that relationship on a more intimate scale than the celebrated…...