Asmara: an African modernist city frozen in time

Before the onset of Italian colonialism in 1890, Asmara, locally referred to as Asmera, consisted of four small villages known as Arbate Asmera (the Four Asmeras). The modern history of the city of Asmara has been profoundly influenced by Italian colonization, as has the country more broadly. During the Italian colonization of Eritrea, it emerged as a crucial colonial stronghold in the Red Sea region and its African hinterland. The city underwent significant expansion and development under Italian rule, particularly from the late 1800s to World War II. This era witnessed the erection of numerous edifices in the Art Deco and Italian futurist styles, which remain defining characteristics of the city’s architecture. It provides a paradoxical view of a lost past and a glimpse into what Italian architects thought was avante-garde and futuristic.

On 8 July 2017, UNESCO designated Asmara as a World Heritage Site, commending its status as the Modernist City of Africa. The organization emphasized that Asmara, situated over 2,000 meters above sea level, began developing in the 1890s as an Italian colonial military outpost. After 1935, the city saw significant construction, adopting Italian rationalist architecture for several buildings, including governmental structures, residences, commercial establishments, places of worship, state-of-the-art cinemas, cafés, and hotels. The designated area included sections of the city developed between 1893 and 1941, along with the indigenous, unplanned neighbourhoods of Arbate Asmera and Abba Shaul, exemplifying a notable instance of early 20th-century modernist urbanism within an African context.

Italians had arrived in Eritrea prior to Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in Rome, but the zeitgeist in Italy was influenced by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who was jailed alongside Mussolini and pioneered the country’s iconic futurist movement. In his manifesto, he spoke glowingly of war, militarism, technology and machines, which he insisted are “more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace”, considered a masterpiece of Greek sculpture. “We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries!” he said in 1909. “What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible?”

It was with this spirit that Italian architects, engineers, administrators and urban planners went about designing the main city in their east African empire.

Fiat Tagliero service station is an iconic example of this in the city. The design for the building was conceived by Giuseppe Pettazzi, an Italian futurist engineer, and was meant to be a “monument to the aeroplane,” with “30-metre cantilevered wings, [a] cockpit body, and sleek wrap-around windows,” writes Edward Denison, an academic specialising in architecture at University College London.

The Fascist party HQ in Asmara is now the main building of the education ministry. The ceiling of this building resembles the letter 'F.' The Mai Jah Jah Fountain (formerly La Fontana) was designed as a public space where the masses could celebrate Italy’s triumphs through marches and ceremonial events.

Evan Nicole Brown argued that Asmara's futurist buildings, constructed between 1935 and 1941, were more than architectural experiments—they were tools of oppression under Italian fascist rule. She raises an ethical question: “Can their architectural beauty be maintained without perpetuating the fascist ideology that built them?” She highlights the complexities of reconciling history, politics, and aesthetics in urban restoration. Others argue that, although these buildings were designed by futurist architects, they were built with Eritrean labour, which deserves recognition.

Medhanie Teklemariam, director of the Asmara Heritage Project (AHP), indicated that in the 1940s, Eritrean labourers, numbering 39,300 compared to 8,380 Italians, formed the backbone of Asmara's construction workforce. They undertook tasks ranging from manual labour to skilled work, enabling the rapid six-year development of the city's iconic buildings. Without the contributions of the local population, Italy could not have achieved such a pace of urban development.

In spite of this debate, Asmara is not merely a remnant of colonialism. It is built on a substantial archaeological foundation that continues to be the focus of ongoing investigation. Recent research indicates that between 800 BC and 400 BC, the region, including Asmara in Eritrea, was inhabited by some of the oldest known permanent agro-pastoral communities in the highlands of the Horn of Africa. “The settlement’s inhabitants lived in stone houses, ate cows and goats, drank beer, farmed fertile land and wore animal skins,” a BBC article noted. “It can be compared to Athens and Rome as it has excellent parallels to those places,” Professor Peter Schmidt, dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Asmara said. These villages existed concurrently with the Pre-Aksumite towns in the southern highlands of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. The settlements became known as the Ona settlements.

The agro-pastoral settlements near Asmara significantly influenced the region's urban development. They were essential to the development of urban centres in the southern highlands of Eritrea throughout the late 1st millennium BC and early 1st millennium AD, especially in regions like Keskese, Matara, and Qohaito (prominent archaeological and historical sites in Eritrea, believed to date back to the pre-Aksumite or early Aksumite period). These discoveries highlight the historical importance of Asmara’s location as a centre of early human habitation and advancement in the region.

UNESCO’s evaluation of the “Outstanding Universal Value” for Asmara, a modernist African city in Eritrea, highlights its importance as a meticulously maintained instance of colonial urban planning during Italian rule from 1893 to 1941. The city’s layout combines an orthogonal grid with radial system components, preserving a human traversable scale throughout its urban environment. Asmara exhibits a blend of eclectic and rationalist architecture, featuring numerous public and private structures that signify its colonial heritage while representing both colonial and post-colonial African existence. The city’s design and architecture exemplify the integration of contemporary urban planning and architectural paradigms with local realities, reflecting the city’s inhabitants attempts to define itself but also conserve its inheritance. Some 90% of its historic buildings are believed to be intact.

Upon the colony’s establishment, Eritrea had only one old, modestly sized city, Massawa (rich with Ottoman architecture that deserves Unesco recognition), and a rich and cosmopolitan history along the Red Sea. It is noted for its scorching coastal environment. Asmara was merely a town with a few thousand inhabitants on the plateau.

In 1897, the first civilian governor, Ferdinando Martini, moved the capital city to Asmara and built his administrative offices there, transforming it into a military fortress due to its strategic location within the province. Subsequently, Asmara emerged as both Eritrea’s political centre and economic nucleus. Over the next forty years, its settlement dynamics transformed entirely, establishing it as the principal city of the “original colony” in terms of population and economic status. It became the preeminent industrial hub in East Africa, encompassing industries and the gold mines that developed nearby. Ferruccio Canali’s article provides a detailed account of Asmara's urban planning.

The city’s expansion was remarkable: in 1921, over 70% of the colony’s white population resided in Asmara, which was estimated to stand at a total of around 3,874 people across the country. During that period, Italian colonialism was predominantly urban, centred in Asmara, with just 18% of Italians residing in Massawa and Keren, while the remaining 12% inhabited smaller cities. By 1935, the capital’s population included 4,000 Italians and 12,000 Eritreans. In 1939, the municipality’s population reached 98,000, comprising 53,000 Italians, according to that year’s census (including 48,000 Italians and 36,000 Eritreans within the city limits). Asmara experienced a remarkable population surge, growing thirteenfold in just four years, becoming the most prominent Italian city in East Africa and the only African capital with a white majority.

The fascist ideology didn’t just impact the visual aspects of Asmara’s urban landscape but also how the city’s populations were organised. The Teruzzi-Cafiero plan included segregationist urbanism, which introduced a clear spatial division between the Italians and Eritreans. Italian residents were housed in modern, villa-style neighbourhoods with green spaces (such as Ghezzabanda). At the same time, Eritreans were moved into separate quarters, including a newly planned “Indigenous Quarter” beyond the hills of Abba Shaul. This segregation was influenced by broader colonial ideologies of racial separation, which were common in Italian, French, and British colonies at the time. Despite its segregationist undertones, the plan also incorporated modernist urban planning principles, such as zoning for residential, commercial, and industrial areas, traffic management, and the inclusion of public amenities.

The colonial administrator and fascist soldier Attilio Teruzzi, juxtaposed Asmara with Addis Ababa in the Shewa region. Asmara had 624 enterprises with an invested capital of 553 million Lire, whereas Shewa had 297 companies with an invested capital of 139 million lire—over three times the concentration in Asmara. In 1936, Addis Ababa was an informal collection of modest residences and huts, whereas, by that time, Asmara had already developed into a fully-fledged metropolis equipped with all necessary facilities.

According to Canali, Teruzzi teamed up with Italian architect Vittorio Cafiero, sent by the government to help plan Asmara. They devised the Teruzzi-Cafiero Plan, which was not solely a scientific urban planning endeavor but rather a politically charged process shaped by the divergent objectives of multiple colonial powers. The plan’s ratification in 1939 followed a succession of bureaucratic challenges encompassing various tiers of consultation and revision.

The wartime exigency following the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 precipitated an unregulated surge in construction in Asmara. Roads, warehouses, barracks, and public edifices were constructed swiftly but lacked a cohesive overarching strategy. Consequently, by the late 1930s, Asmara encountered considerable difficulties with overcrowding, traffic congestion, and the disparity between its burgeoning population and urban infrastructure. The Teruzzi-Cafiero Plan addressed these difficulties, seeking to regulate the city's expansion while recognizing its strategic significance as a center in Italian East Africa.

Despite this urban planning and development, some of Asmara’s poor still live in slums, and some continue to do so. One of these slums, Abba Shaul, was to be demolished and rebuilt in the 1960s. Alamin Abdultif’s masterpiece song shares the same name: “Great Abba Shaul, goodbye before demolishing; you were the caretaker of many poor; be destroyed in peace. Let me sing for it before it is completely ruined. I am sad you will be demolished, but I am happy that I am told you will be developed and look beautiful.” The demolition plan and rejuvenation never materialized, even after thirty years of independence.

Despite the survival of numerous buildings during the protracted liberation war against Ethiopia, which devastated other areas, current preservation and restoration initiatives have been overlooked, jeopardizing the nation’s unique cultural legacy. Many of those impressive Italian buildings still stand today as they did in 1930. They would cry for help if they could speak. As the state controls everything, owners cannot paint the buildings without permission. My new co-authored pictorial book about Asmara, which compares the old buildings to modern times, tells the story. It seems that Isaias is not only at odds with the Eritrean people but with buildings too.

Since independence in 1991, there has been little urban development in Asmara. “Years of economic slowdown reveal themselves in worn-out facades, shuttered restaurants, and half-empty corner shops,” reported Tom Gardner for The Guardian after a visit to the city. Due to the regime’s disinterest and misguided policies, there has been little investment in Eritrea. The only significant development in the early years following independence was the state development known locally as ‘Enda Korea’, referring to the Korean company that built four-story flats near the Palace Hotel in Asmara and the Nakfa House, eight stories high and built in 1995. The construction of Nakfa House, straddling the intersection at Mereb Street and Sematat Avenue, was an unusual choice as it towers over nearby buildings. One social media user complained that it “should’ve been built somewhere close to other tall buildings,” adding that it was blocking the 360° view of the Fiat Tagliero service station, representing Asmara’s futuristic aspirations. Dawit Abraha, assistant project coordinator of the Asmara Heritage Project, told The Guardian that the Nafka House was “trying to block the Fiat from flying.". This speaks to how postcolonial Eritrea is getting in its own way.

In a recent article for Geeska, Omar Degan, a Somali-Italian architect, discussed how Mogadishu grapples with new highrises that don’t complement its urban landscape, undermining its distinctive coastal aesthetic. Asmara faces the opposite issue. The city's threat does not stem from chaotic and uncoordinated development but rather from its stagnation and lack of responsiveness to its residents' needs.