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Lalibela, designated a World Heritage site, is a labyrinthian assembly of Christian partly monolithic sanctuaries, cut from and into the living rock, imitating built-up architecture in the reddish andesitic tufa. About 1200 AD King Lalibela, a ruler of the Zagwe Dynasty, created these scuptured shrines with local stone masons as a New Jerusalem in the Ethiopian highlands..Detail of the facade of Beta Masqal (House of the Cross i.e. the Church of the Holy Cross), Beta Masqal is a broad, 11 m long, 3 m wide gallery excavated in a bulge in the rock on the northern edge of the courtyard of Beta Maryam church.. (KEYSTONE/Georg Gerster)