Asmara is the capital city of the state of Eritrea, Africa’'s youngest nation (independent in 1993 CE). A highly modernized urban center, Asmara is a city whose colonial past distinguishes it from most other areas of the country, which remain largely rural today. Asmara is located in the highlands of central Eritrea, approximately 80 kilometers west of the Red Sea, 250 kilometers west of Sudan, and 90 kilometers north of the official Eritrea - Ethiopia border. Due to its high altitude of 2,300 meters, Asmara enjoys a temperate steppe climate in a region that was formerly covered in dense tropical forests. In 2003, the city’s population was close to 600,000 people in an urban area covering 12,160 square kilometers. 

A testing ground for Italian Modernism and Rationalist urban planning in the 1930s, Asmara has long been one of the most westernized African capital cities. The city boasts a highly developed physical infrastructure, including strong road and service systems, low crime rates, and high education and literacy rates. Unfortunately, despite Asmara’s many strengths, a long history of territorial disputes and a succession of violent and protracted civil wars have led to the contemporary endangerment of much of the city’'s architectural heritage. 

Pre-Islamic Period (932 BCE-1875 CE / AH 1292): 

While recent archaeological discoveries date human settlement on the site of present-day Asmara as early as the ninth millennium BCE, the villages that grew to become the contemporary city were founded during the twelfth century CE. The village of Kidisti Mariam was founded first in what is today northeast Asmara, and the three villages of Kirkos, Kidus Gebriel, and Kudus Giorgis were later established nearby. The four villages were independently governed for at least a century, but eventually security concerns due to the encroachment of animal predators and slave traders encouraged leading women in the villages to promote a military alliance. At a meeting organized by women from the four villages in 1319 CE, the towns elected to merge and center their future development around the Kidisti Mariam Orthodox Christian Church. In recognition of those responsible for the new city’s creation, the name of the new blended city, Arbate Asmara, literally means the four women who made their brothers unite. Later the name of the city was officially shortened to Asmara. 

 

Masonry building techniques developed in the Eritrean highlands fully independent of early European architectural influences, which were widespread across much of northern Africa. Instead of structuring buildings with a post and lintel system, as favored by the Greeks, or with a post and arch system, as popularized by the Romans and later Islamic dynasties, the early Eritreans developed a unique system of wall construction using "monkeyheads". According to this technique, masonry walls of coursed rubble filled with an earth mortar terminated in dressed stones at their ends and corners. After several courses of the wall were laid, a horizontal wooden member was placed along the perimeter of the masonry wall to create a level foundation for additional courses of stone above. Atop the horizontal beam, smaller wooden members were placed perpendicular to the length of the wall, acting as spacers between the stones of the first course of rubble above the beam. These smaller wooden elements projected from the exterior face of the wall, lending them a figural quality that inspired the name "monkeyhead". The notion of the monkeyhead was later adapted to brick construction in Italian architect Gallo’s design of St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral (1920 CE), in which the horizontal wooden beams were replaced with header bricks in relief from the exterior wall surface, while the wooden monkeyheads were employed as per tradition. The conscious incorporation of the local Eritrean architectural language into buildings by Italian Modernists was unique to Asmara, and signals a very unusual instance of cultural exchange within the city under the Italian colonial authority. 

 Asmara remained under the control of local tribes throughout the medieval period, successfully rebuffing an attempted invasion by Islamic militias from the north during the sixteenth century. Though it often served as a political base within its region, Asmara remained a relatively small town of less than 4000 people prior to its conquest by the Egyptians in 1875 CE (AH 1292). At that time, Egypt was part of the Ottoman empire under Emperor Mahmud II (reg. 1861–1876 CE / AH 1277–1293), though the territory was administrated somewhat independently by Governor Isma’il Pasha bin Ibrahim (reg. 1863-1879 CE / AH 1280-1296). Egyptian control of Asmara was short-lived and uneventful architecturally, as the city was captured by Tigrayan Governor Ras Alula only nine years later in 1884 CE (AH 1301). Ras Alula moved his base of operations from nearby Adi Tekay in the Eritrean highlands to the Asmara plateau. Growth of the city under Ras Alula was not centrally planned and consisted primarily of military encampments and their supporting facilities constructed among the scattered villages that collectively composed the urban zone. Alula and his forces maintained control of the city for only three years, as Italian colonial forces - headquartered at Massawa after 1885 - invaded Asmara on August 3, 1887. 

Under the administration of Governor Ferdinando Martini, the capital of Italian East Africa was relocated from Massawa to Asmara in 1899. The Italian colonists approached the development of the city, then comprising approximately 10,000 people, as an opportunity to test Modern urban planning ideas on a large scale. While initially developed evenly, the city was formally segregated into African and Italian zones in 1913, with the Italian zones receiving the bulk of the city’s land area and economic investment. The Italian city plans drafted between 1913 and 1914 featured landscaped boulevards, grand piazzas, and public parks—but only in Italian quarters. The African quarters were densely developed with almost no public spaces, leading to the frequent occupation of roadways within those neighborhoods to accommodate informal economies and social gatherings. 

Many of the most architecturally significant buildings in Asmara today date from the years of the Italian occupation. In the late 1920s, Rationalism developed as an architectural movement in Italy and was soon translated to rapidly-growing Asmara with the support of Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (reg. 1922-1945). The 1930s saw the construction of the Agricultural Office of Eritrea (1935) the Selam Hotel (1937), the Shell Service station (1937), and the renowned Cinema Impero (1937), an excellent extant example of Italian Art Deco architecture. The year 1938 alone marked the construction of the Great Mosque, the covered market, the Nda Mariam Cathedral, and the Fiat Tagliero Service Station. 

It was due to the Italian planning initiatives and extensive building program that Asmara gained the nickname "Piccola Roma," or "Little Rome". The 1939 census estimated that of the 90,000 residents of Asmara, 53,000 were Italian. In that year, the colonial administration approved a plan for further expansion of the Italian areas of the city, but its implementation was put on hold when the Second World War captured Italy’s attention in 1940. 

British Military Administration (1941-1952 CE): 

In 1941, Allied forces invaded Eritrea and the British Military Administration took control over Asmara for the remainder of the Second World War (1939-1945). During the war and the years immediately following, little investment was made by the British administrators in the physical development of Asmara. Two key buildings serve as exceptions, however; the Municipality building (early 1950s) and the Palazzo Mutton (1944) were both constructed during this period with nostalgic reference to the Italian Modernism of the late 1920s. 

The United Nations ordered the federation of the state of Eritrea under Ethiopian governance in 1952, a political designation that was unacceptable to Eritreans from its inception. Only a decade after the organization of the Ethiopian sub-state by the UN, a civil war erupted in 1961 that ultimately became a three-decade-long struggle for Eritrean independence. Despite the fighting that persisted during the later half of the twentieth century, building activity slowly recovered in Asmara with the erection of scattered high-rise concrete structures between the 1950s and 1970s. Notable concrete structures include the Municipality of Asmara building (1971) and the Ambassador Hotel (1972). 

Following a period of famine and economic crisis in 1974, combined Eritrean and Ethiopian military forces originating in Asmara overthrew Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (reg. 1916-1974), ushering in two decades of rule by a communist military junta known as the Derg (reg. 1974-1991). The only major building project completed in Asmara under the oppressive Derg regime was a monumental stadium at Bahti Meskerem Square (late 1970s), later dedicated to commemorate the initiation of the Eritrean struggle for independence on September 1, 1961. The unabated violence of popular revolts under the Derg and the subsequent oppression throughout the region prevented development of the city, its industries, and its infrastructure during most of the late twentieth century.