Asmara
Asmara, literally meaning "They made them unite" in the Tigrinya language, is the capital city of Eritrea. Home to over 800,000 inhabitants, the city sits at an elevation of 7628 feet at the edge of an escarpment, giving it a surprisingly mild and pleasant climate given its low latitude. It is best known for its well-preserved colonial Italian modernist art-deco architecture, and in 2017 the entire city was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Landing at Asmara International Airport.
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Eritrea certainly has some of the most exotic looking money I've ever seen.
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First impression of the city was the many beautiful churches everywhere. The giant Church of Our Lady of the Rosary was right across the street from our hotel. The wide boulevard in front of the church, Harnet Avenue (Viale Mussolini in colonial times), is the city's main drag and afforded my first glimpse at another Eritrean surprise: pedestrians have the right of way everywhere and just cross the street whenever they want to. Yes, cars actually stop when people do this!
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Gorgeous Enda Mariam (St Mary's) Cathedral. So pretty I visited the place at different times of day just to see the changes in lighting.
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Christians and Muslims have peacefully lived side by side in this part of the world for centuries, a lesson Eritrea could teach the outside world. The gigantic Al Khulafa Al Rashiudin mosque is just down the road from the Enda Mariam Cathedral and is equally as impressive. It was built in 1938 by decree from Benito Mussolini to endear himself to the country's prominent Muslim population.
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Another example of tolerance: Christian and Muslim women sitting together at a bus stop.
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More people watching...
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Time to start wandering the streets of Asmara to take in some of its amazing modernist art-deco colonial architecture. Ironically the result of this futurist experiment is a city that now seems frozen in time. First up, the well-known Fiat Tagliero gas station, completed in 1938 and meant to look like the silhouette of an airplane. Equally noteworthy is the fact that its giant unsupported concrete wings have somehow managed to remain intact through episodes of war and strife nearly 80 years later.
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A couple views from the top of the Tagliero building. The IRGA building was built in 1961.
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Historic car garage and an antique Fiat discovered during our random walk.
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Movies were apparently a popular pastime in the 1930s as is evidenced by the numerous historic theaters spread around the city. Today the Cinema Impero and Cinema Roma (both built in 1937) double as coffee shops, gelato joints, and otherwise all-around cool places for people to hang out and be seen.
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Government administrative building in the heart of Asmara. We were warned not to take pictures of any government facilities, but given the fact that so many offices occupied interesting historical structures, this was a hard admonition to follow.
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So many interesting and colorful buildings, so little time.
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My visit to Eritrea in 2017 coincided with the country's independence day celebrations.
The entire city was decked out in Eritrea flags, colors, and patriotic posters.
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Eritrea has only been independent for 26 years, so the vicious war against Ethiopia is still quite fresh in everyone's minds. Here's a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made to get this far: bones spelling out the name of the country over a map of skulls.
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The Eritrean people were exceedingly friendly and always ready to smile for the camera.
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Kids are the same everywhere in the world.
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Another pleasant surprise in Eritrea, the excellent food! Owing to its Italian colonial heritage, pizza and pasta are available everywhere. Traditional style food like injera can also be ordered once you tire of Italian cuisine. Injera is a meat-centric dish eaten by hand. The thin sourdough bread is broken into smaller portions to be used as scoops to gather portions of meat and sauce, then the entire thing is eaten at once.
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This billboard advertisement is seen everywhere in the country.
We had great fun trying to figure out what it was for; it was several days before we were finally told it was a condom ad.
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More aimless walks around Asmara to photograph buildings and propaganda billboards.
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Presidential palace. Taking pictures of this was strictly forbidden, and I was yelled at by a guard and ordered to put my camera away as I walked by. Fortunately this happened after I had already snapped this photograph. :)
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Internet cafes are a dime a dozen in Asmara. Unfortunately it's a cruel joke. Due to government repression, Eritrea has some of the slowest internet speeds in Africa, if not the world. It would often take several minutes for a single page to load.
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Roadside mosque and curious kids brighten up this neighborhood.
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Another picturesque church in Asmara, this one at the top of a hill with gorgeous views out over the entire city.
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The giant white building on the right was built with aid from China, as the satellite dish so proudly proclaims.
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One of the stranger institutions in Asmara, the Tank Graveyard, contains leftover rusting military hardware from the war of independence against Ethiopia. It also apparently serves as a junkyard for everything else that is broken or destroyed, whether it be cars, buses, airplanes or other paraphernalia that no one knows what to do with.
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Asmara also is home to graveyards of the more serious sort. First, a couple snapshots from the beautiful grounds of the Italian war cemetery, where many Italian young men lost their lives fighting against the British in WWII. One would be hard pressed to find a more attractive place to rest for eternity than this.
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The more subdued Asmara War Cemetery, final resting place for British soldiers who perished during the war.
