GONDER

Gondar (The Camelot): The Royal City of Gondar was founded by the Ethiopian Negus Fasilides in the 17th century. Several of his successors built their palaces in the same court, forming a complex of rare beauty. The site was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979. Not far away, the ruins of a more ancient castle left in solitude have another story to tell. Gondar stretches along a ridge in the northern Ethiopian Highlands. The city sits at an elevation of roughly 2,200 meters, and is surrounded on three sides by a crown of 3,000-meter high mountains. To the south, the landscape opens to a valley and distant views of Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile. Gondar is centered on a complex of castles built during the 17th and 18th centuries, when the city was the imperial capital of Ethiopia. Gondar was expanded significantly around 1635 by Fasiladàs, the son of the city’s founder, Suseniòs.

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