The Sacred Sights of Ethiopia

(16 Feb 2011, Ethiopia)-- If your idea of a holiday in East Africa is a simple choice between safari or palm-fringed beaches, think again. Ethiopia provides an altogether different African experience. As a landlocked country, it doesn't offer beaches.

And while you can find elephants and lions in game reserves down in the south-west provinces, along with tribal societies that have remained remarkably intact, these are not the main reason why a growing number of travellers are going there.

Rather, it is the country's unique - and largely uninterrupted - cultural heritage going back more than 2,000 years that is the main draw. A Persian poet of those times observed that there were four great civilizations in the world: Rome, China, his own country, and the Axumite Empire, which ruled from what is now northern Ethiopia. 

The giant stellae erected over royal and noblemen's tombs at Axum still recall that age of grandeur. Ethiopia has more historic World Heritage sites than anywhere else in Africa.

But it is the continuous presence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, with its clifftop monasteries and rock-hewn churches, that is for me most fascinating. The country adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD and that culture, in the Central Highlands at least, has remained largely unchanged ever since. FULL ARTICLE AT this is London.co.uk »

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