Asmara: A Modernist African City

Italian architects of the 1930s treated Asmara as a drawing board, filling Eritrea's highland capital with futurist petrol stations, rationalist cinemas, Art Deco villas and modernist churches and mosques. Begun as a colonial outpost in the 1890s at over 2,000 metres, the city grew through successive plans between 1893 and 1941, alongside the older quarters of Arbate Asmera and Abbashawel. A rare, complete modernist city in Africa, Asmara was inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage in 2017.