Mekelle is a young city, grown from a village that was completely unknown until the 19th century. Mekelle was mentioned for the first time around 1850, in a document listing the fifteen most important settlements in the Tigray. At that time, it was a small village with a church and a priest's dwelling, with presumably just a few hundred inhabitants and not yet worth a mark on any map. In 1871, the
emperor Yohannes IV turned his attention to Mekelle and initiated the er****on of a church, followed by several more buildings in 1876. From about 1884, the emperor and his son took residence in Mekelle, which therefore rose to become a capital. But according to contemporary reports, it continued to keep the size and character of a village. In 1884, the place was completed in its today existing extension. Together with the churches of Madhane Alem and Kidane Mihret and a rich well, it was to shape the core of the future city, around which extensive settlements activities followed soon.
