Eritrea

Eritrea is a country of astonishing contrasts pressed into a narrow strip along the western flank of the Red Sea. From the steaming coral port of Massawa at sea level, the land climbs in a single breathtaking gasp to Asmara at 2,325 metres — one of the highest capital cities in Africa, cool, pine-scented, and improbably lined with Italian Art Deco cinemas, futurist petrol stations, and cafés serving macchiato in porcelain cups. Beyond the plateau lie the ancient ruins of Qohaito, the green-belt cloud forest of Filfil, the camel caravans of the western lowlands, and the turquoise reefs of the Dahlak Archipelago. Independent since 1993 after one of the longest liberation wars in modern African history, Eritrea is both deeply proud and deeply closed — a place where the Italian colonial past, the Orthodox Christian highland culture, and the Islamic coastal culture intersect in ways that exist nowhere else.

Eritrea is sometimes described, accurately, as the most unusual country on the continent. Internet is slow and tightly controlled, the national currency cannot legally leave the country, photography of bridges and government buildings is forbidden, and every journey outside Asmara requires a stamped travel permit from the Ministry of Tourism. And yet travellers who make it through emerge talking about one of the kindest, safest, and most unexpectedly beautiful destinations they have ever visited.

The name Eritrea comes from the Ancient Greek Erythra Thalassa (Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα) — "the Red Sea" — a name Italy adopted when it formally proclaimed the colony Colonia Eritrea in 1890. In Tigrinya the country is ኤርትራ (Ertra), pronounced roughly "Er-tra". The national flag carries three triangles — red for the blood of the martyrs of independence, green for agriculture and the future, blue for the Red Sea — with a gold olive wreath echoing the earlier flag of the Eritrean Liberation Front. The country's identity is built on the memory of the thirty-year independence war (1961–1991) and on the resilient figure of the fighter (tegadalay, male; tegadalit, female), commemorated in countless monuments and street names.

Eritrea occupies 117,600 km² on the Horn of Africa, bordered by Sudan to the west and north, Ethiopia to the south, and Djibouti in the far southeast, with over 1,150 km of Red Sea coastline to the east and more than 350 islands, most of them in the Dahlak Archipelago. The country divides neatly into three zones: the cool Central Highlands (1,600–3,000 m) where Asmara sits and most of the population lives, the hot coastal strip that drops sharply to sea level and includes the Danakil Depression — one of the hottest inhabited places on Earth — and the western lowlands sloping gently toward Sudan, home to camels, sorghum farms, and the historic town of Keren. Administratively Eritrea is divided into six zobas (regions): Maekel (central), Debub, Anseba, Gash-Barka, Northern Red Sea, and Southern Red Sea. The highest point is Emba Soira at 3,018 m; the lowest is the Kobar Sink (–75 m) inside the Danakil.

The territory of modern Eritrea has been inhabited for at least a million years — the 1995 discovery of a one-million-year-old hominid skull near Buia is one of the most important paleoanthropological finds in the Horn. By the first millennium BCE the Red Sea coast hosted the sophisticated pre-Aksumite civilisation, with trading links stretching to Egypt, Arabia and India; the port of Adulis near modern Massawa shipped ivory, incense and obsidian across the ancient world. From roughly the 1st to the 7th centuries CE the region was absorbed into the Kingdom of Aksum, whose king Ezana adopted Christianity around 330 CE — the same orthodox tradition still dominant in the highlands today.

Ottoman forces took the coast in 1557 and held Massawa for more than three centuries. In 1869 an Italian shipping company purchased the port of Assab, and in 1890 Italy formally proclaimed the Colonia Eritrea. Italian rule lasted until 1941, when British and Commonwealth forces defeated the Italians at the Battle of Keren — a brutal mountain engagement still remembered in both countries. Britain administered Eritrea until 1952, when the UN federated it with Ethiopia; in 1962 Emperor Haile Selassie unilaterally annexed Eritrea as Ethiopia's 14th province, triggering the Eritrean War of Independence. After thirty years of guerrilla fighting — the longest-running conflict in African history — the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) marched into Asmara on 24 May 1991. A UN-supervised referendum in 1993 produced 99.8% in favour of independence. Border war with Ethiopia (1998–2000) cost tens of thousands of lives; a surprise peace deal in 2018 reopened the border briefly, and relations have remained complicated ever since.

Eritrea recognises nine ethnic groups, each with its own language and traditions: the Tigrinya (highland Christian farmers, roughly half the population), the Tigre (lowland Muslim pastoralists), the Saho, Afar (the fearsome camel-herders of the Danakil), Bilen, Hedareb, Kunama, Nara, and the Rashaida — camel-breeding Arab nomads who migrated from the Arabian Peninsula in the 19th century and are famed for their heavily veiled women in red and black. The population splits almost evenly between Orthodox Christianity (the indigenous Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church) and Sunni Islam, with small Catholic and Protestant communities dating from Italian times. Tigrinya and Arabic are the working languages; English is the medium of secondary and higher education. A coffee ceremony (bun) — roasting green beans over charcoal, grinding by hand, brewing three rounds in a jebena clay pot — is the universal gesture of welcome across all nine groups.

Asmara (also Asmera) sits on the edge of the central highlands at 2,325 m and is unlike any other city in Africa. Between 1935 and 1941, Mussolini's planners treated it as a laboratory for the most futurist, rationalist, and novecento architecture Italy could produce — then abandoned it almost untouched after the British took over in 1941. Half a century of isolation preserved the result like a fly in amber. Walking up the palm-lined Harnet Avenue (formerly Viale Mussolini) you pass the 1938 Fiat Tagliero petrol station (a concrete aeroplane with 15 m cantilever wings), the Cinema Impero, the Gran Caffè, the Bar Zilli, the Capitol Cinema, the Roma, the Odeon, the former opera house, and the ochre-pink Catholic cathedral of 1923. Elderly men in berets read La Gazzetta dello Sport on the terrace of Bar Royal. It is, quite simply, the best-preserved colonial-era modernist city on Earth — and in 2017 UNESCO inscribed the entire centre as a World Heritage Site under the title "Asmara: A Modernist African City".

Don't miss the Medeber recycling market, where Italian-era machinery is hand-forged into cooking pots, coffee roasters and stoves; the Nda Mariam Orthodox Cathedral with its striking Coptic-Italian fusion; the National Museum; and, at sunset, an espresso on the rooftop of Albergo Italia.

From Asmara, the road drops 2,300 metres to sea level in just 115 km, corkscrewing through cactus-fringed cliffs and passing through dozens of microclimates. Massawa, at the bottom, is a twin-island city of coral-stone mansions, Ottoman arches, and bombed-out Italian villas slowly being restored. The Sheikh Hanafi Mosque, the Imperial Palace, the old Banco d'Italia, and the battered but beautiful central square are a melancholy time capsule of Red Sea Ottoman–Italian fusion architecture. Massawa is infamously hot — summer highs exceed 45 °C — but the evenings by the waterfront, with fishing dhows returning and the call to prayer drifting across the harbour, are unforgettable. Don't miss fresh grilled shehana (whole Red Sea snapper) at one of the harbour restaurants.

Keren, 91 km northwest of Asmara at 1,390 m, is the country's second-largest town and the spiritual heart of the Bilen people. Famous for its Monday camel market — one of the largest in East Africa — Keren's narrow streets hide the tomb-shrine of the Madonna of the Baobab (a weeping image of the Virgin reportedly embedded in a living tree), the beautifully weathered Italian-era railway station, and the solemn Commonwealth war cemetery commemorating the 1941 Battle of Keren, where the Italians dug in for 53 days on the cliffs of Mount Sanchil before finally being dislodged by British, Indian and Free French forces. The hills around Keren are dotted with British, Italian and Eritrean cemeteries from three wars.

Just off Massawa, 210 coral-ringed islands (of which only four are permanently inhabited) form one of the most pristine — and least-visited — reef systems on the planet. Dahlak Kebir, the largest island, once produced some of the finest pearls in the Islamic world and today houses perhaps 2,000 Afar and Arab fishermen in a handful of palm-shaded villages with ancient cisterns hand-cut from the coral. Snorkelling over the shallow reefs you can spot hawksbill turtles, blacktip reef sharks, whale sharks (in season), giant clams, and the iridescent colours of a completely undisturbed Indo-Pacific coral ecosystem. Access is tightly controlled — you need a permit from the Ministry of Marine Resources and a chartered boat from Massawa — but the few who make it are rewarded with the feeling of stepping off the map entirely.

Perched at 2,700 m on a dramatic plateau 120 km south of Asmara, Qohaito is one of the most important and least-understood pre-Aksumite archaeological sites in the Horn. Massive stone columns of the "Temple of Mariam Wakino", cisterns, funerary dolmens, and the extraordinary Saphira Dam — a pre-Christian stone water-storage structure — lie scattered across a wind-swept mesa grazed by camels. The site has never been systematically excavated. Nearby, the Adi Alauti cave shelters rock paintings of cattle and hunters thought to be 5,000 years old. The nearby town of Adi Keyh is a pleasant base, and the plateau ends in the spectacular Debre Sina escarpment, where the highlands fall 2,000 metres in a single vertical drop.

Eritrean food is among the most distinctive in Africa: a communal meal served on a single enormous circle of injera — spongy, slightly sour pancake made from fermented teff flour — with small mounds of meat and vegetable stews (wot and tsebhi) scooped up by hand, always with the right hand, tearing off torn pieces of injera as the edible plate and utensil in one. The signature spice blend is berbere — a deep red, smoky mixture of chilli, fenugreek, ajwain, korarima, nigella and a dozen other aromatics. Italian influence surfaces everywhere: pasta with berbere tomato sauce, lasagne in country cafés, and world-class espresso culture in every town.

Zigni (Tsebhi Sga)

Spiced beef stew — the Eritrean national dish

Ingredients (serves 4): 600 g beef chuck cut into 2 cm cubes, 80 ml niter kibbeh (spiced clarified butter) or ghee, 4 large red onions finely diced, 3 tbsp berbere, 6 garlic cloves minced, 25 g fresh ginger grated, 400 g chopped tomatoes, 300 ml beef stock, 5 green cardamom pods, 1 tsp ground korarima, salt, injera for serving.

Preparation: In a heavy pot, dry-cook the onions over medium-low heat without any fat, stirring patiently for 25–30 minutes until deeply caramelised and almost jam-like — this is the non-negotiable foundation of every Eritrean stew. Add niter kibbeh, berbere, garlic, ginger, cardamom and korarima; fry for three minutes until very fragrant. Stir in tomatoes and cook ten minutes to break them down. Add beef, turn to coat in the spice paste, then pour in stock. Cover and simmer on the lowest heat for 2–3 hours until the meat is falling-apart tender and the sauce is thick, glossy and deep red. Adjust salt. Serve in the centre of a large platter of injera with a green salad and a wedge of himbasha.

💡 Zigni is always better on the second day. Make it the night before and reheat gently.

Shiro

Spiced chickpea flour stew

Ingredients: 100 g shiro powder (roasted, spiced chickpea flour), 30 ml olive oil, 1 onion finely minced, 3 garlic cloves minced, 15 g fresh ginger grated, 15 g tomato paste, 1 tsp berbere, 500 ml warm water, salt, fresh cilantro to finish.

Preparation: Heat the oil in a saucepan and soften the onion until pale gold. Add garlic, ginger, tomato paste and berbere; cook one minute. Sift in the shiro powder while whisking continuously to prevent lumps. Gradually pour in warm water, still whisking, until the mixture is smooth and the consistency of soft polenta. Simmer gently for 15 minutes, stirring often so it doesn't catch. Finish with a drizzle of oil and chopped cilantro. Serve hot, in the centre of the injera, scooped up with torn pieces.

💡 Shiro is the national comfort food — cheap, nourishing, and eaten during fasting days as it is fully vegan.

Himbasha (Hambasha)

Celebration cardamom bread

Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour, 10 g instant yeast, 80 g sugar, 8 g salt, 2 tsp ground green cardamom, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 egg, 220 ml warm milk, 80 g melted butter, 2 tbsp raisins (optional), 1 egg yolk for glaze, sesame and nigella seeds.

Preparation: Combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt and spices. Add egg, warm milk and melted butter; knead 10 minutes until silky. Prove covered until doubled (about 90 minutes). Knock back, knead in raisins if using, and shape into a flat round 25 cm across on lined baking paper. With a sharp knife cut a radial sun-ray pattern from the centre, pressing 5 mm deep. Prove 30 minutes. Brush with egg yolk, sprinkle with sesame and nigella, and bake at 180 °C for 25–30 minutes until deep gold. Cool before tearing by hand.

💡 Traditionally baked to celebrate weddings, Epiphany, and returning travellers.

Eritrea has no meaningful commercial wine industry today, though it possesses a fascinating Italian colonial viticultural legacy. During Italian rule (1890–1941) settlers planted small vineyards on the highlands around Asmara at roughly 2,300 m, where the cool, dry climate proved surprisingly suited to grape cultivation. The Asmara Winery (Melotti), founded in 1945 by the Italian-Eritrean Melotti family, produced red, white and sweet wines plus the famed Asmara Zibib aniseed spirit and Areki grape brandy for decades; a smaller Medeber facility still operates intermittently with aging Italian equipment. Output is negligible and quality rudimentary — bottles are curiosities rather than serious wines.

Eritrea's indigenous drinking traditions are far more vibrant. Mes (also mies) is a traditional honey wine, brewed with wild gesho hops and consumed from round-bottomed flasks called berele — a tradition with roots stretching back more than a thousand years. Suwa is a sorghum-and-barley home beer popular in the lowlands. Asmara Beer, the national lager, is brewed at the Italian-built Asmara Brewery and is crisp, cold and surprisingly good. Areki, a clear grain-and-grape spirit of around 40% ABV, is drunk in tiny glasses before meals. But the truest Eritrean drink is coffee — see the next section.

No visit to Eritrea is complete without a full bun (coffee ceremony): green beans roasted on a brazier until they crackle and smoke, ground in a wooden mortar, and brewed three times in a tall-necked clay jebena, served in handleless porcelain cups on a bed of fresh-cut grass while incense of frankincense and myrrh perfumes the room. Each of the three rounds has a name — abol, kale'i, baraka (the blessing). To refuse the third round is impolite. Below, two traditional recipes.

Eritrea has three distinct climate zones. The highlands (Asmara, Keren, Qohaito) are cool and dry year-round with daytime temperatures of 18–25 °C and chilly nights that can drop below 5 °C in December and January — no one warns you how cold Asmara gets. The coast (Massawa, Assab, Dahlak) is searingly hot: winter highs of 30–34 °C and summer highs that regularly exceed 45 °C with crippling humidity. The western lowlands are arid and dusty. Rainfall is concentrated in two small seasons — the azmera (March–April) and the main kremti (June–September) on the highlands — while the Red Sea coast is virtually rain-free. Best time to visit: October–March, when the highlands are dry and sunny and the coast is tolerable. Avoid July–August on the coast unless you enjoy being cooked.

Flights land at Asmara International Airport (ASM). Scheduled carriers in 2026 include Ethiopian Airlines (daily from Addis Ababa — often the easiest routing), EgyptAir (from Cairo), FlyDubai and Qatar Airways (from Dubai / Doha), Turkish Airlines (from Istanbul) and Eritrean Airlines on selected routes. Land borders are periodically closed: the Ethiopian border reopened in 2018 but has been effectively shut again since 2020; the Sudanese border at Tesseney is unpredictable; the Djibouti border is formally closed. There is no passenger ferry service. Arriving by air remains the only realistic option for most travellers.

Visa: required for virtually all nationalities — must be obtained in advance from an Eritrean embassy (there is no visa on arrival). You must submit an invitation letter, usually arranged by an approved Eritrean travel agency, and pay roughly US$70 for a 30-day single entry. Process can take 4–8 weeks. Travel permits: every destination outside Asmara (including Massawa!) requires a separate internal travel permit, issued free by the Ministry of Tourism on Harnet Avenue — apply at least 48 hours in advance. Checkpoints on the road to Massawa and elsewhere will confiscate you without one. Currency: the nakfa is pegged (15 ERN ≈ 1 USD) and cannot legally leave the country. Bring US dollars or euros in cash — credit cards are virtually useless, ATMs non-existent for foreign cards. Photography: bridges, government buildings, military, the port and the dam on the Asmara–Massawa road are strictly forbidden. When in doubt, ask. Electricity: 230 V, plug types C, L. Blackouts are frequent. SIM cards: only the state monopoly Eritel; tourist purchase is difficult. Internet: slow, filtered, and mostly only in hotels. Health: yellow fever certificate required if arriving from a yellow-fever country, malaria prophylaxis recommended below 2,000 m, hepatitis A/B and typhoid advised. Time zone: EAT (UTC+3).

Eritrea is cheap by African capital-city standards if you pay in nakfa, moderately priced if you pay in dollars. Indicative 2026 prices: a double room in a mid-range Asmara hotel €40–70, a meal of zigni and injera with a beer in a local restaurant €4–7, a macchiato in any Italian-era café under €0.50, a one-hour taxi ride across town €3, a full day of hired 4×4 and driver with permit €100–150. Private tour-agency day trips to Massawa run €140–220 per person including permit and lunch. ATMs are not functional for foreign cards: bring all your money in pristine US dollar or euro cash.

The best addresses in Asmara are the historic Albergo Italia (a beautifully restored 1899 property with a rooftop bar), the Asmara Palace (the former Intercontinental, the closest to an international five-star), the Sunshine Hotel, the Crystal Hotel and the charming Khartoum Hotel. In Massawa the historic Dahlak Hotel (on the peninsula) and the newer Luna Hotel are the main tourist-grade options. Keren has the simple Keren Hotel. Elsewhere, expect spartan government rest-houses and no booking systems — your travel agent will arrange everything.

Independence Day (24 May) — the biggest date on the calendar, with parades, fireworks and concerts marking the 1991 liberation of Asmara. Martyrs' Day (20 June) — solemn, candlelit. Orthodox Christmas (Genna, 7 January) and Timkat / Epiphany (19 January) — massive religious processions in Asmara and Keren. Meskel (27 September) — the Finding of the True Cross, celebrated with giant bonfires and singing. Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha — major festivals along the coast and in the lowlands. Keren Festival (early May) — the annual Anseba regional cultural festival with camel races, music and food. Asmara Film Festival (biennial) — celebrating restored Art Deco cinemas.

Eritrea has one inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Site (as of 2026): Asmara: A Modernist African City (inscribed 2017). The site covers the planned modernist core of Asmara and includes some 4,300 buildings in the styles of rationalism, novecento, monumentalism and futurism, making it "an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context". Eritrea also maintains a tentative list that includes Qohaito Cultural Landscape, Matara archaeological site, the Dahlak Archipelago, and the ancient port of Adulis — any or all of which could be inscribed in future.

Beyond the obvious: the Filfil green belt, a sudden pocket of cloud forest on the Asmara-to-Massawa road where baboons tumble out of mist-wet euphorbia trees; Nefasit and the surviving sections of the Italian-built narrow-gauge railway, where on certain mornings a restored steam locomotive rattles up the 2,300 m climb past cactus-covered cliffs; Matara, a mysterious pre-Aksumite obelisk rising from an empty field; the Debre Bizen monastery, perched on a 2,400 m cliff above Nefasit (men only); the Semenawi Bahri national forest; the salt caravans that still plod for days from the Danakil into Keren; and, for the truly intrepid, the apocalyptic landscapes of the Danakil Depression near Assab — sulfur pools, salt lakes and the occasional distant glow of active volcanoes.

Pack layers: Asmara is cold at night, Massawa is brutal. Bring lightweight cotton trousers and long sleeves (sun and modesty), a warm fleece and long trousers for Asmara evenings, a quality sun hat, strong reef-safe sunscreen, modest swimwear for Dahlak, a good head-torch (power cuts are routine), a universal adapter (C/L), a comprehensive first-aid kit including malaria tablets, water-purification tablets, a soft-copy of every document plus paper photocopies for permit applications, pristine US dollar bills (smaller than $100, no tears or marks), printed flight tickets and hotel reservations. Leave behind anything military-patterned or drone-shaped — both can get you detained. A small gift of coffee or a notebook for the inevitable hospitality is appreciated.

Ministry of Tourism of Eritrea — the authority for travel permits, Harnet Avenue, Asmara. Embassy of the State of Eritrea in your capital — the only source of visas. ShaEbia.org — official news. Eri-TV for state broadcasting. Travel Eritrea / Eri-Explore are the two main ground operators used by foreign agencies. For context, the excellent Bradt Guide to Eritrea (Edward Denison) remains the indispensable printed resource, and the UNESCO file on Asmara is worth downloading before you go.

I Didn't Do It for You by Michela Wrong — the essential, bitingly elegant history of how the world used and discarded Eritrea. Asmara: Africa's Secret Modernist City by Edward Denison — the definitive illustrated study of the Art Deco capital. African Titanics by Abu Bakr Khaal — a luminous, heartbreaking novel about Eritrean migration. The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia. Silence Is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia. Bradt Travel Guide: Eritrea by Edward Denison — the most practical guidebook ever written to this country. Ciao Asmara by Justin Hill — a warm, literary memoir of a British VSO volunteer in 1990s Keren.

Search YouTube for: "Asmara Africa's modernist capital" (ARTE documentary), "Eritrea — the North Korea of Africa" (Vice), "Inside Eritrea" (BBC Our World), "Dahlak Archipelago Red Sea", and the Eritrean Tourism Ministry's own promotional reels. Drew Binsky and independent travel vloggers have filmed a handful of honest, unscripted Asmara walkthroughs well worth watching before your visit.

Asmara has more Art Deco per square kilometre than Miami Beach. • Eritrea minted its own currency — the nakfa — only in 1997, replacing the Ethiopian birr. • The country runs on Greenwich Mean Time + 3 but still observes the Geʽez calendar in churches, which is 7 or 8 years behind the Gregorian one — so 2026 in Asmara is 2018 on a monastery wall. • Eritrea has no McDonald's, no KFC, no Starbucks, no Uber, and no Western chain hotels — and locals seem largely untroubled by this. • The 117-km Asmara-to-Massawa railway climbs 2,394 m through 30 tunnels and 65 bridges and is one of the great narrow-gauge engineering feats of the 20th century. • Eritrea's 1,150 km coastline is one of the longest in Africa. • The country shares its Orthodox Christian Tewahedo tradition with Ethiopia but considers it distinctly Eritrean. • Until 2018, the Eritrean–Ethiopian border was the most militarised in Africa. • Most Asmara cafés still use Italian cash registers from the 1950s, and many still work.

Isaias Afwerki — founding president of independent Eritrea (from 1993), former EPLF guerrilla commander, and its only leader to date. Bereket Mengisteab — legendary krar player and singer, one of the great voices of the independence movement. Helen Meles — contemporary Tigrinya pop icon. Daniel Teklehaimanot — first Eritrean (and first black African) to wear the polka-dot jersey at the Tour de France (2015). Zersenay Tadese — multi-time world half-marathon champion and long-distance legend. Nipsey Hussle (1985–2019) — the late American rapper of Eritrean heritage, widely honoured in Asmara. Tiffany Haddish — American actress and comedian of Eritrean father. Ghirmay Ghebreslassie — 2015 world marathon champion. Haile Menkerios — senior UN diplomat.

Eritrea's obsession is cycling. The Italians introduced bicycles as a civilian vehicle in the 1920s, and the country has never let go: the annual Giro d'Eritrea is a multi-stage race that weaves from Asmara down to Massawa and back, and on any Sunday morning the roads around the capital are full of young men in lycra hammering up the plateau. Football is a distant second, with the national team (the Red Sea Boys) a regular participant in CECAFA competitions. Eritrean long-distance runners routinely appear in the world top-ten of the marathon and half-marathon.

Eritrea has consistently ranked at or near the bottom of the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index since 2007 — often below North Korea. All domestic media is state-owned: the newspaper Haddas Ertra, Dimtsi Hafash radio, Eri-TV, and the official news agency. Private media has been banned since 2001, when all independent newspapers were closed and at least a dozen journalists arrested; several remain unaccounted for more than two decades later. Foreign correspondents are rarely admitted, and the few who visit do so on tightly controlled itineraries. Travellers should assume every online communication is monitored, be careful what they discuss on the phone, and never try to photograph police, military, or government buildings.

I arrived in Asmara on a January evening so cold I had to dig out the only fleece in my luggage. The taxi from the airport was a powder-blue 1962 Fiat 1100 with a crack across the windscreen and a little aluminium Madonna glued to the dashboard. The driver — a courteous man in his seventies who introduced himself as Tesfamichael — insisted on taking the long way round "so you can see the Viale by night". The Viale, now Harnet Avenue, was floodlit and almost empty. Cinema Impero glowed like a theatre set. An old woman in a white netsela shawl was sweeping the pavement outside a 1938 café. A stray dog trotted past the Fiat Tagliero. It was the single most cinematic arrival I have ever had in any city in the world.

The next morning I drank the three rounds of the coffee ceremony in a small tea-house near the Medeber market, where an Italian-era lathe was being used to turn recycled bomb casings into frying pans, and the lady pouring the baraka laughed at my attempt to hold the tiny cup the proper way. Three days later I was in Massawa, sweating through my shirt in the Sheikh Hanafi Mosque square, eating grilled fish with my fingers, watching dhows glide into port under a sky the colour of a hot coin. And a week after that I was on a government permit on the plateau at Qohaito, standing among 1,500-year-old stone columns with a cold wind roaring off the escarpment and not another human being anywhere within three kilometres.

Eritrea is not an easy country. The permits, the dollars, the filtered internet, the careful conversations — all of it is real. But it is also a country where people have fought longer and harder for their independence than almost anyone else on the continent, and they will tell you so in beautifully enunciated Italian over espresso number two. Go if you can. Go before the Art Deco is repainted. Go before the Fiat 1100s are retired. Go while the jebena is still clay and the injera is still sour and the pride is still fierce. There is absolutely nowhere like it.

—Radim Kaufmann, 2026