Eritrea's Little Rome perches 2,325 metres above the Red Sea lowlands
Asmara, Eritrea's capital, sits at 2,325 m (7,628 ft)—sixth-highest capital worldwide and Africa's second-highest. Italian colonial planners nicknamed it Piccola Roma after rapid modernization. A Latin itinerary under Emperor Dawit I (1382–1411) offers the first written mention.
Tigrinya oral tradition says four clans shared this part of the Kebessa Plateau, the Gheza Gurtom, Gheza Shelele, Gheza Serenser and Gheza Asmae, and suffered repeated raids from the lowlands until the women of each clan insisted that the four join forces for peace. The men agreed, and the place became Arbate Asmera, a Tigrinya phrase crediting the women with making the four unite. In the late nineteenth century the settlement rose as capital of Bahr Negash Gerada Zeray and passed through the hands of several regional chiefs, the last of them Ras Alula.
Still a small village when Italy occupied it in 1889, it grew fast, and Governor Ferdinando Martini made it the capital of Italian Eritrea in 1897. A railway to the coast by way of Ghinda followed early in the twentieth century, and the city came through big earthquakes in 1913 and 1915 almost unscathed. By the 1939 census, 53,000 of its 98,000 residents were Italian, most of the 75,000 Italians in the whole colony. Architects treated it as a testing ground for radical designs, leaving landmarks such as the Art Deco Cinema Impero of 1937, the Cubist Africa Pension and the futurist Fiat Tagliero Building; UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in July 2017.
In 1952 the United Nations federated the former colony with Ethiopia, and during the federation the capital was Addis Ababa, more than 1,000 kilometres south. Altitude gives Asmara a cool semi-arid climate with warm rather than hot summers and mild winters, and recorded temperatures have ranged from −4.5 °C to 31.0 °C. The city houses the Eritrean National Museum and often serves as the starting point of the Tour of Eritrea cycle race.
Source: Asmara
