Ankober was formerly the capital of the Ethiopian kingdom of Shewa founded by Yekuno Amlak in the thirteenth century. Buildings that survive from the Shewa period include the Kidus Mikael Church, built by Sahle Selassie. According to Philip Briggs, all that survives of Menelik's palace, which he had built on the site of his father's palace, is "one long stone-and-mortar wall measuring some 1.5m high." Briggs comments that it is "difficult to say why this one wall should have survived virtually intact when the rest of the palace crumbled into virtual oblivion." Ankober is also known as where the endemic Ankober serin was first observed by ornithologists in 1979.