Gondar » Venture Ethiopia - Tours and Travel

Gondar

A wonderful, historically important city, Gondar has an unusual collection of castles and churches.  The city was founded in 1636 by King Fasiladas and served as the capital city of the empire for more than two hundred years.  The city was a commercial centre that linked the empire to the Arabian Peninsular and the Mediterranean world.  Today, Gondar is a thriving university town, as well as being a centre of learning for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and an important commercial and transport hub for northwest Ethiopia. Some of Gondar's historic monuments still retain their original spiritual function and the surrounding landscape has significant cultural importance for the local inhabitants.

Gondar is famed for its many historic buildings and picturesque ruins.  Between the 13th and 17th centuries, Ethiopian rulers moved their royal camps frequently, but King Fasil (Fasilidas) settled in Gondar and established it as a permanent capital in 1636.  He built Fasil Ghebbi (the Royal Enclosure), from where he and successive Emperors and Empresses reigned.  Many of these rulers added their own palaces and castles to the enclosure, which includes amongst others, Fasilides' Castle, Iyasu's Palace, Dawit's Hall and Empress Mentewab's Castle.  In total, Gondar has around 20 palaces, royal buildings, churches and monasteries from this period, all in a distinctive Baroque style brought to Gondar by the Jesuit missionaries and resembling a piece of medieval Europe transposed to Ethiopia.

Indeed, Fasil Ghebbi and the other remains in Gondar city demonstrate a remarkable interface between internal and external cultures, with cultural elements related to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Jews and Muslims. This relationship is expressed not only through the architecture of the sites but also through the handicrafts, painting, literature and music that flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Nowadays, Gondar and the surrounding areas are still home to most of Ethiopia's Jewish communities.

Aside from the Royal Enclosure, two of Gondar's best preserved historic buildings are Fasilides' Bath, famous for the annual Timkat (Epiphany) celebrations which are still held there, and Debre Berhan Selassie Church, a typical Ethiopian Orthodox Church of the period with illustrated storyboards of biblical events painted on the walls.

Gondar remained the capital of Ethiopia until Tewodros II moved the Imperial capital to Magadala when he was crowned Emperor in 1855.  Since then, Gondar has been ruined many times - the city was plundered and burnt in 1864 and then devastated again in December 1866.  Then, in June 1887, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad destroyed Gondar when he invaded Ethiopia, and in January 1888, Gondar was once again ruined by Sudanese invaders who set fire to almost every Church.  Following their invasion in 1936, the Italians developed Gondar's main square with shops, a cinema and other public buildings in the Moderne style, which can still be seen today. The Italian forces also took over the Royal Enclosure and this is where they made their last stand before final defeat in November 1941, having already lost Addis Ababa to British forces six months earlier.

Map of Gondar