Senafe and the nearby ruins of Metera are one of the great windows onto Eritrea's most ancient past. On the southern edge of the highlands, close to the Ethiopian border, the town of Senafe sits among imposing rock masses, while a few kilometres to the south lie the remains of Metera (Belew Kelew), a city that flourished for more than a millennium as one of the centres of the kingdoms of D'mt and Aksum.
The symbol of the place is the Metera stele, a tall monolith carved with ancient inscriptions and symbols that still stands as a testament to that civilisation. Around it, excavations brought to light churches, houses and objects that confirm the city's importance on the trade route between the highlands and the Red Sea. The area also holds treasures such as the rock-hewn church of Enda Tsadqan, carved out of the rock.
This practical guide explains how to get to Senafe and Metera, what there is to see, why this corner of southern Eritrea was so important in Antiquity, and what to keep in mind —permits, guides, distances— when visiting. A destination for travellers curious about the deep history of the Horn of Africa, ready to explore thousand-year-old ruins in a landscape of spectacular mountains and crags.
Next to Senafe stand the ruins of Metera (Belew Kelew or Matara), a city that was one of the great centres of the kingdoms of D'mt and Aksum, active roughly from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD. Its most famous remnant is a stele carved with ancient symbols and inscriptions. Excavated by the French archaeologist Francis Anfray in the 1960s, Metera revealed churches, houses and objects that confirm its role in trade between the highlands and the Red Sea. Senafe, on the edge of the highlands and close to the Ethiopian border, is also notable for its rock formations and for the nearby rock-hewn church of Enda Tsadqan. Its full history is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The archaeological heart of Eritrea: the southern plateau of Debub holds the pre-Aksumite ruins of Qohaito and the Aksumite ruins of Metera, among baobabs, ancient steles and stone villages.
Read the history of The historic south: Debub →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Senafe sits at the southern end of the Eritrean highlands, where the plateau nears the border with Ethiopia and starts to break up into mountains and crags. It is high country, close to Emba Soira, the tallest peak in the country at over 3,000 metres. Saho and Tigrinya peoples have lived here since ancient times, combining highland farming with herding.
Its position on the edge of the plateau, on the natural route between the Abyssinian interior and the lowlands leading to the Red Sea, made the area a place of passage and settlement from very early on. The imposing granite rock formations around Senafe shape its landscape. They also gave shelter and defensive positions to the communities that settled here over the millennia.
In this setting, a few kilometres south of present-day Senafe, one of the most important cities of ancient Eritrea flourished: Metera, also known as Belew Kelew or Matara. Its history is bound up with the great kingdoms that ruled the Horn of Africa long before the colonial era. That makes this corner of southern Eritrea a key place for understanding the region's deep past.
Metera's origins go back more than two and a half thousand years, to when the kingdom of D'mt (or Da'amat) flourished in the highlands of the Horn of Africa. It was one of the region's first complex states, a contemporary of the civilisations of southern Arabia, with which it had close contact. In that setting, around the 7th century BC, Metera began to grow into an important settlement on the plateau.
The city benefited from its location on the routes linking the interior with the Red Sea coast. Goods, ideas, techniques and beliefs travelled along them, and the highland communities grew richer from the exchange. Metera was one of the places where this commercial and cultural life left material traces that have survived to our time, which makes it a key site for studying pre-Aksumite Eritrea.
The settlement lasted a remarkably long time. It is thought to have been active for more than a thousand years, until around the 7th century AD, which shows how resilient and important it was. Few cities of the ancient world were occupied for so long. Metera stayed relevant through the shift from the kingdom of D'mt to the great empire of Aksum.
The kingdom of Aksum rose to become one of the great powers of antiquity, a contemporary of Rome and Sasanian Persia. Metera came into its orbit and kept on prospering. The city was part of the network of highland settlements that supported Aksumite power and its long-distance trade, which centred on the great port of Adulis on the Red Sea coast.
The best-known relic of this period is the Metera stele, a tall stone monolith carved with symbols and inscriptions. Among them is the disc and crescent, a religious motif typical of the pre-Aksumite and Aksumite world, along with an inscription that specialists have studied closely. Today the stele is the emblem of the site and one of the great icons of ancient Eritrea.
Archaeological excavations at Metera, especially those led by the French archaeologist Francis Anfray in the 1960s, uncovered houses, three churches and some remarkable objects, such as a lamp decorated with a scene of animals. These finds confirmed how wealthy the city was and how it carried on through the different periods. They also confirmed the arrival of Christianity, which Aksum adopted in the 4th century and which left its mark on the city's churches.
When the kingdom of Aksum adopted Christianity in the 4th century, religious life changed in cities like Metera and across the highlands. Churches were built, and the Orthodox faith put down deep roots that remain to this day. Near Senafe, the monolithic church of Enda Tsadqan bears witness to that tradition and to the skill of the ancient stonemasons. It was carved straight into the rock, in the style of the famous rock-hewn churches of the neighbouring Ethiopian highlands.
Like so many ancient cities, Metera eventually declined. Its fortunes were tied to Red Sea trade and to the kingdom of Aksum itself. From the 7th century, trade routes shifted with the rise of Islam and the weakening of Aksum. Cities like Metera and the port of Adulis lost their reason for being and were gradually abandoned, and their ruins were left to the elements.
For centuries, the remains of Metera lived on in local memory but went unnoticed by the wider world. Only with the archaeological research of the 20th century was their value fully recognised. The stele, the ruins and the churches of the area became key pieces in reconstructing the history of the kingdoms of D'mt and Aksum, and a source of pride in Eritrea's historical identity.
In modern times, Senafe remained an important place in southern Eritrea. Being so close to the Ethiopian border also put it at the centre of recent conflicts. During the 1998-2000 border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, fighting and occupation hit the Senafe area directly, and it suffered the damage and hardship that came with the war. The region had already been through decades of the war of independence.
With those times behind it, Senafe is once again a quiet highland town, with its market, its Saho and Tigrinya communities and its rural life. For the country, the area is a double treasure. On one side is Metera's ancient archaeological heritage, with its stele and ruins. On the other are the mountain landscapes and rock formations that make this corner one of the most distinctive in Eritrea.
Today, Senafe and Metera give travellers a window onto the most ancient past of the Horn of Africa. They are part of the southern historical circuit that links them with Qohaito and the Adulis coast. Visiting the Metera stele, walking through the ruins and taking in the crags of Senafe means stepping into more than two and a half thousand years of history. The landscape is magnificent and still sees very few international tourists.
