Narga Selassie is a church on the western shores of Dek Island

Dek Island

Dek Island is the biggest island on Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It is administratively included in the Bahir Dar Zuria woreda of the Mirab Gojjam Zone. To the southeast of Dek is the much smaller Daga Island.- Overview :It is home to several monasteries, the best known being Narga Selassie...

, the largest island of Lake Tana

Lake Tana

Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile and is the largest lake in Ethiopia...

 in northern Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

. The name signifies "Trinity of the Rest". "Rest" refers to the place and the shade thereabouts.

The church was constructed by Empress Mentewab

Mentewab

Mentewab , was Empress of Ethiopia, consort of Emperor Bakaffa, mother of Iyasu II and grandmother of Iyoas I. She was also known officially by her baptismal name of Welete Giyorgis...

 in the late 18th century, apparently using as construction material for doors and roof a gigantic sycamore fig tree that stood at the centre of a slight elevation, now the centre of the church. Narga Selassie is fully decorated in the local style. A relief on the main entry portrays the Scottish explorer James Bruce

James Bruce

James Bruce was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia, where he traced the origins of the Blue Nile.-Youth:...

, who visited the capital, Gondar, in the late 19th century.

Narga Selassie was constructed in the classic round architecture of the churches of Lake Tana, with the notable contamination of the use of stone both in the perinaeum around the church and in the compound walls.

It is accessed from the lake through a port constructed in 1987, which is connected to Bahar Dar and Gorgora

Gorgora

Gorgora is a town and peninsula in northwestern Ethiopia...

by a state-owned ferry service. The access is in itself a beauty spot with a huge sycamore with long aerial roots descending to the lake and a door tower which forms part of the original construction.