Asmara, a little Italy of the past, Massawa a crumbling world
Asmara, capital of Eritrea, was once said to be the most beautiful city of Africa. Built by the Italians in the first half of the 20th century when Eritrea was a colony, it became a breeding ground for the most experimental modernist architects of the times. Today, Asmara can boast an impressive selection of spectacular buildings, cinema, theatres and even petrol station designed in the spirit of these times. Even more so, these buildings have been kept almost intact, unscathed by the brutal passage of time.
Almost forgotten by the world after decades of conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia, Asmara has retained a charm unmatched in the region. Coming from our frantic 21st century cities, it is a genuine pleasure to walk about Harnet Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare, famous for its harmonious line of palm trees giving shade to extravagant Art Deco buildings. The walking pavement are wide and clean with many cafés to stop for a macchiato or a juice, bicycles are in greater number than cars, and at night, the sky is so clear that the constellations shine brighter than any other light around. Most surprisingly for an African city, there are no slums around.
It is not for nothing that the Italians who built it nicknamed it “Piccola Roma”, a reputation that spread far beyond Eritrea to Italy’s academias and classrooms, so unique the story of Asmara’s urban development was. Ask any old Italian who has once lived there, and the way he will pronounce the city’s name will encapsulate so much love, nostalgia, and sentimental regrets, like in the name of a lost lover: “Ah, ASMARA”. The name itself contains the idea of reunion, as it originates from Arbaete Asmara meaning the four are united in Tigrigna, from the four villages who came together against a common ennemy in the 12th century, long before the Italians knew the place even existed.
A new capital city
The city as we know it was built in just over a generation from 1910 to 1940, coinciding with the mass emigration waves that also brought Italians to the US and northern Europe. In East Africa, they first landed in the Ottoman port of Massawa on the Red Sea in the 1890s, following a widespread geo-political trend to open outposts in the region due to its new strategic importance brought by the opening of the Suez Canal. A decade later they moved their administrative centre to the small settlement of Asmara at 2,400 metres in altitude, where the climate was more bearable. The city grew in importance -a theatre and a cathedral were built-, however, the most impressive urban development took place in only five years from 1935 when Mussolini invaded nearby Ethiopia to create a greater colony until 1941, the year of his downfall in Africa. Part of his colonial policy was to turn Eritrea into the industrial centre of East Africa, and that attracted many Italian companies. In 1938, the Italians represented more than half of the 98,000 inhabitants of Asmara. It was in essence an Italian city with an Italian lifestyle having an opera house, many cinemas, cafés and restaurants as well as motor cars. Walking into the famous Cinema Impero with its marble staircase, period 35mm projector and original Mahogany folding seats, is like entering into Italy’s past (a little as if Cinema Paradiso in the movie of the same name had not been demolished). Equally, a brief visit to the Central Post Office reminds us of a bygone world before the advent of the internet, when people kept post boxes for their mail. We were tempted to send ourselves a postcard but were prevented to do so by local bureaucracy: postcards and stamps could only be bought from the philatelic shop which was closed at the time. Of course, Instagram is quicker but far less memorable.
Groundbreaking architecture
The great energy to build the then future attracted bold young architects who may not have had the same chance on the mainland. That was the case in particular of Giuseppe Pettazzi whose name fell into oblivion but whose realisation is one of the most admired by architects all over the world. He fathered the Fiat Tagliero petrol station, an iconoclast building that defied gravity in the shape of an airplane or fantastic bird of prey with its two 16 metres wings. Thanks to the technical innovation of reinforced concrete, the wings could spread without a supporting pillar, which caused the architect a lot of trouble. When the building was completed, the workers refused to remove the scaffolding from under the wings in fear that they would collapse. The young and impetuous Pettazzi had to threaten them with a gun to free the building, and to everyone’s amazement the wings stayed in place and still are 80 years later.
We stayed at Albergo Italia, another remnant of Asmara’s Italian past, which was renovated about a decade by an Eritrean-Italian businessman now based in Milan. The man, named Giovanni Primo, was so attached to the place that he jumped on it when it came up for sale and made it his personal mission to return it to its former splendor. He succeeded. Each room is decorated with top quality in-laid furniture as it would have been in the early 20th century. All the original features such as stuccoed ceilings and marble bathroom have been kept. It feels like being in a family hotel, the way they once were.
Beyond the Art Deco buildings, Asmara was a highly modern city with a sound urban infrastructure and a transport system linking it to Massawa, the landing port for imports and exports. A winding railway line had been built at the start of the century, which was already a technical achievement with the steep declivity (2400 metres in just over 100 kilometres), however, it was the cable way built in the mid-1930s to carry goods faster that stunned the world’s best engineers for its technical prowess. Just like a cable way taking skiers up a mountain, it linked up Asmara to Massawa in a straight 75 km line, and was one of the longest three-cable aerial way ever constructed. It was dismantled by the British when they took momentarily control of Eritrea after Mussolini’s defeat in 1941.
The road to Massawa on the Red Sea
Following a simple but nonetheless bureaucratic procedure of requesting travel permission, we made it to Massawa, hiring a taxi to drive the meandering 117 km down the highlands. The road was quite spectacular, particularly at the start when the descent is steep and the view is still high over the surrounding mountains. At some point we did cross the old railway which is being rehabilitated for tourism, although we did not see it working. I am not sure it will ever be a success if it takes seven hours to make the journey instead of two and a half by road. As the Eritrea tourism brochure says, we crossed three seasons in just over two hours from the freshness of the highlands to the sweltering heat of the coast (although it wasn’t too bad in January), passing through the lush and fertile midlands, the country’s orchard.
Massawa was another surprise, less positive this time. I was expecting a small jewel of a town full of suggestive Ottoman palaces, it turned out to be a war zone. Most of the buildings were crumbling down if they were not already demolished, the once ornate façades were full of irreversible cracks revealing piles of rubble behind, the town felt poor and neglected with many children begging. We could see from the remaining buildings that it had once been a stunning place with an intricate architecture but it was a ghost of its former self. It would need to be restored without wasting any more time if it is to survive. We stayed at the Dahlak palace hotel, the only one in town apart from some modest inns, which was also acquired by Giovanni Primo, in his quest to rehabilitate Eritrea’s heritage. It doesn’t have the same intimate feel as Albergo Italia and is slightly run down (the water in the pool was green) but it is popular with Asmara residents who use it as a weekend base to snorkle around the pristine Dahlak islands. After that, going back to Albergo Italia for our last night in Asmara felt like going back home.
Being myself interested in art and architecture, I was fascinated by the city, however, some of my Ethiopian friends find it boring and lacking in social life. They may be right, a city needs to live in the present too and above all, look towards the future to cristalize the energy of its citizens. That, we couldn’t yet feel. I could see the limitations of going from café to café after four days of doing it. Maybe now that Asmara is on UNESCO World Heritage’s list and that peace with neighbouring Ethiopia has finally been concluded, it will give a new impetus to the city. The risk will be to fasten development around the historic centre and turn the latter into an open museum for tourists only. If Asmara could grow organically, it would show that urban development doesn’t necessarily mean suffocation. A forward thinking path in direct line with its forward-looking urbanisation a century ago.
