St. George's Cathedral, Addis Ababa

Listen first. Somewhere in the trees, a low chant is rising and falling. It is the sound of Ge'ez, the old liturgical language of Ethiopia, still used in church after many centuries. Pilgrims in white cotton shawls pass you on the path. Some stop, bow, and touch their foreheads to the gate or the outer wall. The air smells faintly of incense and eucalyptus. You are standing at Saint George's Cathedral, one of the most important churches in Addis Ababa.

Look up at the building itself. It is not a long hall with a tall spire, like most cathedrals in Europe. It is octagonal, an eight-sided building of grey stone under a domed roof. This round or many-sided plan is traditional in Ethiopian Orthodox churches. The idea is a set of rings, one inside the other. The faithful stand in the outer ring. The holiest space sits at the very centre, closed to ordinary visitors.

That centre holds something important. Every Ethiopian Orthodox church keeps a tabot, a consecrated tablet that represents the Ark of the Covenant. Without a tabot, a building is not a church at all. Only priests may see it. On great feast days, the tabot is carried outside, wrapped in rich cloth and held high on a priest's head. Crowds follow it with drums, singing and umbrellas of velvet and gold.

The story of this cathedral is tied to one battle. In 1896, at Adwa in northern Ethiopia, the army of Emperor Menelik the Second defeated an invading Italian force. It was one of the very few times an African army stopped a European colonial power in open battle. The victory kept Ethiopia independent. It became a symbol of pride far beyond the country, across Africa and its diaspora.

According to tradition, the tabot of Saint George travelled with the Ethiopian army to Adwa. Saint George, the soldier saint who fights the dragon, was a natural patron for soldiers going to war. After the victory, Menelik had this church built to honour the saint and to give thanks. So, when you look at these stone walls, you are looking at a war memorial as well as a place of worship.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Popular accounts say that Italian prisoners captured at Adwa helped to build the cathedral. The design is also often credited to an Italian architect. It is a striking idea... a monument to an Italian defeat, raised partly by Italian hands. Historians debate some of the details, so treat it as a well-known story rather than a settled fact. Still, it shows how tangled the two countries' histories became.

The church was completed in the early twentieth century, and it soon became a stage for the nation's biggest moments. In 1917, Empress Zewditu was crowned here. In 1930, Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was crowned in this same cathedral. Imagine the scene. Foreign dignitaries in top hats, Ethiopian nobles in lion-mane headdresses, and the whole compound full of drums and incense.

The building has also seen violence. Italy returned in the 1930s and occupied Ethiopia for several years. During that occupation, the cathedral was set on fire and badly damaged. After Ethiopian independence was restored in 1941, the church was repaired. The stone you see today carries that history. It is a survivor of two wars with the same enemy, forty years apart.

If you can go inside, notice the light. Coloured glass windows throw patches of red, blue and gold across the floor. Much of the modern artwork here is linked to Afewerk Tekle, one of Ethiopia's most celebrated twentieth century artists. His work combines old Ethiopian church painting with a bolder, modern style. Look at the faces. Ethiopian religious art gives saints large, wide-open eyes, and that tradition is clear here.

Older paintings follow a style that has been used in Ethiopian churches for centuries. Saints are shown face-on, with dark outlines and flat, bright colours. The good figures look straight at you. Evil figures, by tradition, are often painted in profile. Saint George appears again and again, usually on a white horse, his spear driven into the dragon below. It is a simple image, and every child in the compound knows it.

The grounds also include a small museum. It holds church treasures and objects linked to the emperors who worshipped here. You may see ceremonial crosses, crowns, robes and old manuscripts written on parchment. The hand crosses are worth a close look. Each one is a lacework of metal, with patterns that repeat and twist into each other. Ethiopian craftsmen developed these designs over many centuries.

Now think about the people around you. For most of them, this is not a historic site. It is their church. Some come every morning on the way to work. Some stand outside for the entire service, leaning on wooden prayer sticks. Others sit quietly against the wall with a prayer book. Be gentle with your camera here. A small nod and a smile will usually tell you if a photograph is welcome.

The cathedral sits at the edge of the Piazza district, one of the oldest parts of the capital. Down the hill, the traffic of Churchill Avenue rushes on. Nearby, a statue of Menelik on horseback looks out over the square. So the emperor who ordered this church still watches the city he founded. Inside the gate, though, the noise drops away, and the trees take over.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment. Listen again for the chanting, the shuffle of bare feet on stone, the birds in the eucalyptus. Look once more at that eight-sided wall, grey and calm in the highland light. A victory, two coronations, a fire and a rebuilding all happened here. And yet, today, the most important thing is the simplest one... people still come to pray.