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Welcome to my travel guide to Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
Aksum, or Axum as you will also see it written, is on most itineraries for its antiquities and the fact that it was once home to one of the world’s great civilisations. This is certainly reason enough to visit, but I also really enjoyed the vibrancy and life of the town. This is not something you usually encounter when you visit ancient sites.
In this article, I will tell you all you need to know about Aksum, Ethiopia. For information on other places to visit in this amazing country, as well as travel tips, please read my Complete Ethiopia Travel Guide.
In this article
Getting to Aksum
Domestic Flight
Ethiopia has a surprisingly extensive network of domestic flights operated by Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s most respected airline. There are two flights a day from the capital Addis Ababa to Aksum. The flight takes an hour and costs around $US240 for a round trip. It is also possible to fly to and from Lalibela and Gondar, although these services are less frequent.
Find your flights
By Bus
There are bus services which connect Aksum to Gondar, Mekele and Debark (for the Simien Mountains).
Getting Around in Aksum
A shared taxi to or from the airport 5.5km from town costs around 100 Birr (US$3.50)
Private tuk-tuks or bajaj charge foreigners 30 to 40 Birr to go from the town centre to the Northern Stelae Field. A shared bajaj is only 3 Birr to cross town.
History of Aksum
Aksum is acknowledged as the site of one of the world’s great civilisations and yet surprisingly little is really known about it. As you are guided around the place today, a lot of what you are told is merely speculation and conjecture. Rumour has it that the Queen of Sheba came from here, but did she really? Many believe that the one true Ark of the Covenant is kept in a chapel here, but is it really? Some say that there are still hordes of treasure to be discovered in hidden tombs, but are there really? Above all, nobody really knows exactly what the famous stelae signify. So, Aksum is a place of great mystery and wonder and if you have a good guide, as we did, then your interest is sure to be aroused.
Whilst the debate continues as to whether Aksum really was the Queen of Sheba’s capital in the 10th century BC, we are certain that there was a civilisation here as early as 400BC. By 100AD, Greek merchants knew Aksum as a great city and the capital of an extensive empire. For the next 1000 years, both the city and the Aksumite kingdom were seen as among the world’s greatest. Then, quite suddenly, the power of Aksum collapsed and the city turned into a forgotten backwater. Only now, a millennium later, are archaeologists taking a serious interest in the sites here.
Things to do and See in Aksum
Visit the Stelae Fields
Open
8 am to 5.30 pm every day
Entrance Fee
50 Birr per person (US$1.75)
The northern stelae field
Our Visit
I’d read about what is known of the stelae fields before going there. Stelae are tall obelisk-like structures, most probably built as tombstones and monuments to show the power and greatness of the ruling families. I expected them to be enormous and impressive, and so they were, but the site of the northern stelae field, which we visited first, was much smaller and closer to town than I expected it to be.
Amazingly, each stele was sculpted from a single piece of granite. Such was the size and weight of each piece (the largest weighed 520 tonnes!), that some of them never made it to an upright position, toppling over as they were being erected. These have been left just as they fell. One or two stelae which have been deemed to be unstable in recent years have been supported with frames and steel ropes. These are the only new additions to this ancient site. The stelae range in size from 1 metre to 33 metres tall and many are decorated with small windows, doors, and even door handles and locks, to mirror the architecture of Aksumite houses.
Local people have assigned each stele to one of their kings and named them accordingly, but nobody really knows who they were dedicated to. For this reason, historians only use numbers to identify each stele. There are 66 in the northern stelae field, with probably even more still to be discovered. Despite the grandeur of all these rock needles before our eyes, our guide kept reminding us that, with 90% of the field not having been dug yet, the chances were that we were walking on even greater treasures than those we could see!
Stele 2, also known as Rome Stele, is the second largest ever produced at Aksum. It is believed to have collapsed sometime between the 10th and 16th centuries. It broke into three pieces. Unbelievably, in 1937, Mussolini ordered that the remains be shipped to Italy. The stele was reassembled in Rome, where it was known as the Aksum Obelisk. Decades of futile negotiations finally ended in 2005 when it was finally returned home to Ethiopia. It was seen as a great triumph for Richard Pankhurst, son of Sylvia, who had worked tirelessly to get it back. It was raised in Aksum in 2007 and is now, despite its visible cracks, the most impressive of all the stelae.
A stele which never made it to an upright position
Stele 2, also known as Rome SteleDetail of Stele 2
From the stelae field, we visited the very interesting on-site archaeological museum. Having the context of what we’d just seen gave meaning to the exhibits. I was particularly taken with some exquisite coloured glassware which had been found in one of the tombs.
Houses have been built close to fallen stelae
Take a Tour
While it is perfectly possible to explore Aksum independently, why not book a tour and let someone else take care of the logistics?
Whenever we visit a new city, we try to book tours with local guides. There’s no better way to get under the skin of a place! We use Viator when we want to uncover interesting things to do in a new city. They’re easy to use and book with, and we’ve had some amazing experiences with them.
Check out These Tours:
Take a Look at the Queen of Sheba’s Bath
After pausing for a coffee ceremony, we walked on to the Queen of Sheba’s bath. Despite its name, this was a reservoir rather than a swimming pool or bath and provided water to Aksum for millennia. It was hewn out of solid rock and is an impressive 17 metres deep. Sadly, what you see today is marred by the fact that the outer portion was coated with concrete in the 1960s, giving the whole thing a very modern appearance.
Coffee ceremonyThe Queen of Sheba’s bath
Visit the Tombs of King Kaleb and King Gebre Meskel
From there, we got back on the truck and went to visit the tombs of King Kaleb and King Gebre Meskel. On the way, we stopped off to see King Ezana’s inscription. This is the Ethiopian version of the Rosetta Stone and, fittingly, remains where it was found by three farmers in 1988. A small shack has been built around it to protect it from the elements.
The tombs themselves are set on the top of a small hill. The views from here are incredible. You can see across the Adwa Mountains to Eritrea. From here it would only take two hours to drive to the Red Sea, but this is impossible due to the political situation between the two countries.
The view across to the Adua Mountains
Pause at the Queen of Sheba’s Palace
Our next stop was at the Queen of Sheba’s palace, a ruin just outside of town which is more likely to have been a nobleman’s mansion than what its name suggests. It has 44 rooms and I’m sure it’s very interesting, but, by the time we got there, we were hot, tired and hungry and knew that we still had to do the food shopping for our forthcoming camping trip. I’m sure I’m not the only one of our group who switched off at this point!
The Queen of Sheba’s Palace
Stroll Around the Town
Aksum is a pleasant place to walk around, made all the more interesting for us as, while we were there, we were shopping for supplies for our upcoming camping trip in the Simien Mountains. Shopping in a provincial Ethiopian town is not easy. There’s no Tesco nearby which can satisfy all your needs! We all started out with lists of what we wanted, as you do, but soon had to adapt to what was actually available. We must have gone to a dozen or more small shops to find what we needed and, not having seen them for sale elsewhere, ended up buying eggs and flour from a very obliging lady who ran the juice bar next door to the hotel.
Buying fruit and vegetables in the market was interesting, too! Most stalls were nothing more than a rice sack on the floor with a few items on it. We wanted enough potatoes to do jackets for 16 people and had to go to five sellers before we had enough! We bought all the lettuce one girl had. She charged us 10 Birr (about 35 US cents) for the lot and then packed up and went home, clearly happy that she’d sold out.
Taking a camel to marketLadies going home from market
Shop for Souvenirs in the Basket Market
For me, though, the highlight of our time in Aksum came because we were lucky enough to be there on Saturday morning. This is when the highly talented basket makers of the area gather under the huge fig tree in the central square to sell their wares. The baskets are extremely colourful and the ladies who make them come to market in their best clothes, so it amounts to quite a spectacle. These baskets are highly sought after by Ethiopians from other regions, who stock up on them when they come to Aksum at festival time. They range in size from the very small to enormous ones which are used to store injera and, we were told, are given as wedding gifts, but only to virgin brides!
These photos give some idea of the colour of the basket market.
Hotels in Aksum, Ethiopia
There are not that many hotels in Aksum and you certainly won’t find five-star western-style accommodation, but there are clean rooms available. Just remember that you are in Africa and running water and electricity may not always be available!
Armah Hotel
This two-star hotel in the town centre is in a great location for visiting the sights of Aksum. There is a bar and shared lounge and free wi-fi throughout the hotel. The rooms are clean and spacious. Customer reviews are generally good, although clients do say that the included breakfast is not that great! Expect to pay around US$45 per night for two people sharing a double room.
Hotel Delina is another centrally-located hotel giving easy access to Aksum’s tourist sites. There is free wi-fi throughout the hotel. All the rooms have ensuite facilities and flat-screen TVs. A double room for two people costs around US$23 per night.
The Ethiopis Hotel offers free airport transfers which are very popular with guests. There is a restaurant in the hotel, a 24-hour front desk and free WiFi. All guest rooms come with a seating area and a flat-screen TV with satellite channels. The price of a double room for two people is around US$35 per night.
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