Attractions & Natural Wonders · Eritrea
Eritrea: Seven Attractions and Natural Wonders
A modernist Italian city frozen in the 1930s, a coral-stone port on the Red Sea, a graveyard of tanks, and an archipelago of little-visited reef islands
By Worldlore Editorial · 30 September 2026
A country that keeps to itself
Eritrea is a small Red Sea country that won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year war, and it has been one of the most closed and tightly controlled states in the world ever since — indefinite national military service, almost no free press, and, until a 2018 peace deal with Ethiopia, near-total isolation. Travel is possible but bureaucratic: foreigners need permits to leave the capital, some areas are off-limits, and photography of official sites, bridges, and military anything is forbidden. Since September 2026 a crisis at the Bab al-Mandab strait, at the southern end of the Red Sea, has disrupted shipping in the region.
The seven below are what there is to see, concentrated in the capital and along the coast. The highlands are temperate; the coast is extremely hot.
1. Modernist Asmara
Asmara, at 2,325 metres in the highlands, was largely built up in the 1930s as the showcase capital of Italy's east African empire, and Mussolini's architects filled it with Rationalist, Futurist, and Art Deco buildings — cinemas, garages, cafés, and apartment blocks. Little of it has been redeveloped, so it survives largely intact, and in 2017 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, "Asmara: A Modernist African City" — the first modernist city to be listed in its entirety.
The centre is best explored on foot — the Cinema Impero, the Fiat Tagliero, the Bar Zilli, the Cubist Africa Pension — in a walkable, café-lined grid.
2. The Fiat Tagliero building
The most famous single building in Asmara is a former petrol station from 1938, designed by the engineer Giuseppe Pettazzi in the shape of an aeroplane — a central tower for a fuselage and two 15-metre reinforced-concrete wings with no props under them. The local authorities insisted on supporting pillars; Pettazzi is said to have settled the argument by threatening, gun in hand, to kill the contractor if they were not removed.
It still stands, unsupported, and is the image of the city.
3. Asmara's cathedrals and markets
Within a few blocks of Asmara's centre stand the Roman Catholic cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary (1923, Lombard-Romanesque), the Enda Mariam Orthodox Cathedral (1938, a bold fusion of styles), and the Al Khulafa Al Rashiudin mosque — a trio reflecting the city's mixed faiths. The large Medeber market is one of the liveliest corners of the city.
4. The Tank Graveyard
On the outskirts of Asmara, a vast open lot holds the rusting remains of the war that ended in 1991 — tanks, armoured vehicles, and trucks, stacked in rows. What is left is a stark, quiet monument.
5. Massawa and the Dahlak Islands
Massawa, Eritrea's main port, was for centuries an Ottoman and Egyptian trading town, and its old town, on two islands joined to the shore by causeways, has buildings faced with coral block — much of it worn by war and neglect, but atmospheric. Off the coast lie the Dahlak Islands, a low-lying archipelago of two large and 124 smaller islands with coral reefs, dolphins, dugongs, and turtles, only three of them permanently inhabited. It draws divers and snorkellers, but in small numbers.
Access is by permit and by charter boat from Massawa; there is very little organised tourism.
6. The Qohaito plateau
South of Asmara, near the town of Adi Keyh, the Qohaito plateau holds the ruins of an ancient city on the trade route between the Aksumite kingdom and the Red Sea port of Adulis — an ancient dam, temple remains, and rock art nearby — perched above a dramatic canyon that drops toward the coastal lowlands.
The coastal site of Adulis itself, a major port two thousand years ago, has been excavated on the Gulf of Zula, about 40 kilometres south of Massawa. Both need permits.
7. Keren
Keren, northwest of Asmara in a bowl of hills, is a mixed Muslim-Christian highland town with an Italian-era railway station, a British and Italian war cemetery from fierce 1941 battles, the shrine of a saint in a hollow baobab tree (Mariam Dearit), and busy livestock and general markets, drawing Bilen, Tigre, and Tigrinya traders.
The old narrow-gauge railway once ran on to Keren; its Massawa–Asmara section has been restored and runs charter trains for tourists.
Eritrea is a slow, permit-heavy trip for travellers who want somewhere genuinely untouristed. Asmara alone rewards a couple of days; the coast and the highland sites need time, patience, and the right paperwork.