About This Place

The sky church is a popular nickname for Abuna Yemata Guh, a monolithic church in the Gheralta mountains of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. It earned this name because of its extreme, vertigo-inducing location. Perched on a sheer sandstone pinnacle nearly 2,600 meters above sea level and roughly 250 meters above the surrounding terrain, the church is widely considered the most inaccessible and dangerous place of worship in the world. To reach it, pilgrims and visitors must make a daring, vertical climb without ropes or harnesses, utilizing small hand and footholds that have been worn into the cliff face over centuries. Because of this dramatic placement and the feeling of being closer to the heavens, it is frequently described in travel literature and media as the "church in the sky."