Give Asmara three days for the modernist streets around Harnet Avenue, the Fiat Tagliero station, Cinema Impero and a long terrace macchiato. Everything beyond needs a permit applied for in Asmara. Massawa, down the escarpment, has Ottoman coral-block streets and boats to the Dahlak Archipelago. Time Keren for its Monday camel market. The road south reaches the Aksumite ruins at Qohaito. Seven days covers Asmara, Massawa and Keren. Every land border is closed.
1 Eritrea city guide
Fun fact
The Massawa to Asmara railway climbs more than 2,300 metres in about 118 kilometres of narrow gauge. Italy built it between 1887 and 1932, and Eritrean crews, many of them veterans of the line, rebuilt it by hand in the 1990s. It still runs on 1930s Mallet steam engines.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityThey share a script, a kitchen and thirty hard years, and they travel differently. Eritrea was Italian from the 1890s, so Asmara is modernist and pasta is an ordinary lunch. It has 1,200 kilometres of Red Sea coast, is roughly half Muslim, and at a tenth of the size it fits a week.
The realityIt is difficult. Visas are issued, operators run tours, flights land in Asmara, and the permitted circuit of Asmara, Keren, Massawa and the Dahlak islands makes a good week. Nothing is spontaneous. The visa comes from abroad, permits take days, and money arrives in cash.
The realityIt is a working capital with roughly 400 preserved modernist buildings. People queue at the cinemas and marry in the buildings guidebooks photograph. UNESCO listed it in 2017 because the city is intact and in use. It is also uncomfortable heritage, built by an occupier with a segregation plan.
The realityMassawa has Ottoman, Egyptian and Italian streets on coral islands, with barely-dived reef offshore. Qohaito and Metera are Aksumite-era sites. Semenawi Bahri holds cloud forest and leopard. Keren's Monday camel market is one of the great markets of the Horn. Permits are the constraint.
The realityIt is structural. The railway, the escarpment road, the coffee, the bread, the pasta and the language older Asmarinos slip into are in daily use ninety years on. The buildings survived because the country was too poor, then too preoccupied, to knock them down.
How to get it right
- Accept the coffee. The ceremony runs to three rounds and an hour, the last of them a blessing, and leaving after the first is a small insult. Popcorn or roasted barley usually comes with it.
- Eat with your right hand, off the shared injera, and take from the section in front of you. Feeding a mouthful to someone else at the table is affection, not a joke.
- Dress conservatively, especially in Keren, Massawa and the lowlands. Shoulders and knees covered in any church or mosque, and shoes off at the door.
- Do not photograph soldiers, police, government buildings, bridges, the port or the airport. Ask before photographing anyone. This is the rule visitors break most often and the one with real consequences.
- Greetings are unhurried. A handshake, a shoulder touch and a run of questions about family come before business, and cutting to the point reads as rude.
- Politics is not small talk. National service, the border and the government are live subjects with consequences for the person answering, not for you. Let Eritreans raise them if they want to.
- Timekeeping is relaxed and hospitality is not. An invitation home is meant, arriving with something small is right, and refusing food outright lands badly.
Famous Eritrean faces
Biniam Girmay
Abraham Afewerki
Helen Meles
Zersenay Tadese
Ghirmay Ghebreslassie
Daniel Teklehaimanot
Bereket Mengisteab
Nipsey Hussle
Alemseged Tesfai
Sulaiman Addonia
Dawit Isaak
Ficre Ghebreyesus
Tiffany Haddish
Must-try Eritrean food
Zigni
The national dish. Beef simmered with berbere, tomato and onion, eaten off injera.
Shahan ful
Stewed fava beans with oil, onion, tomato and chilli, with bread. The cheap breakfast.
Himbasha
Lightly sweet celebration bread with cardamom, sesame and raisins, scored into wedges.
Bun
Coffee as ceremony. Beans roasted at the table, brewed in a clay jebena, three rounds.
Tsebhi dorho
Chicken stew, red with berbere, finished with a boiled egg. For guests and holidays.
Tihlo
Roasted barley balls dipped in spiced meat sauce with a wooden fork. A highland dish.
Shiro
Stewed ground chickpeas or broad beans with garlic and chilli. The everyday vegan plate.
Alicha
The mild stew, with turmeric in place of berbere and beef or vegetables.
Hilbet
Fava beans, lentils and fenugreek whipped to a cream around a chilli sauce.
Injera
Sour fermented teff flatbread. The plate, the cutlery and the base for everything above.
Kitcha fit-fit
Torn unleavened kitcha tossed with spiced butter and berbere, often with yoghurt.
Spaghetti with zigni
A ninety-year-old Eritrean staple: pasta under a berbere-hot meat sauce.
Lasagna, Asmara style
Still made properly in the Italian-era restaurants along Harnet Avenue.
Suwa
Home-brewed barley beer, cloudy and low in alcohol, poured from a shared jug.
Mies
Fermented honey wine, sweet and stronger than it tastes, served in a rounded flask.