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The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela are eleven monolithic churches carved out of the rock. They are situated in the city of Lalibela, Ethiopia.

According to tradition, they were carved out of rock in the early 13th century on the orders of King Gebre Mesquel who set out to construct "a new Jerusalem" for the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians on their land, since the expansion of Islam made pilgrimages to the Holy Land difficult. The layout of the site has been designed to ensure that its topography corresponds to a symbolic representation of the Holy Land, hence its name "Ethiopian Jerusalem".

However, studies show that the site was probably built over a long period of time, several centuries, even though the chronology has not been established yet.

Construction
No historical document provides information on the architect, the workers or the exact foundation date of the churches. It is, however, clear that significant resources were used to carry out the construction. Regarding the Church of Saint George, 3,400 cubic metres of stone were removed from the courtyard and about 450 cubic metres from inside the church. For Bete Medhane Alem church, 15,000 cubic metres were removed from the courtyard and 10,000 cubic metres from inside the church.

There is a lot of speculation about how the construction of the site was carried out. According to Walter Raunig, the first phase would have been the excavation and the roughing phase, which made it possible to gradually clear the various parts of the building according to the unevenness of the ground. This phase would have been followed by the precise work phase: the stones but also the works were sculpted. The workers might have started with the galleries inside the block of the church and then carved from the entrance to finish the surfaces.

It is, however, possible that the outside was hewn out before the details of the facade were carved, finally removing the stone from the inside through the entrance. This method is more complex than the previous one and is therefore unlikely to have been used.