Africa’s ‘Little Rome’, the Eritrean city frozen in time by war and secrecy

itting on the edge of a roundabout in Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea and the centre of Italy’s former African empire, the Fiat Tagliero service station is a glorious sight: art deco lettering spells out its name in both Italian and Amharic in a font worthy of a Fellini film poster, while two 30-metre concrete wings soar across the former garage forecourt below, mimicking an aeroplane.
The building’s wings are full of the bold attitude of a bygone era in Eritrean history. Built in 1938 by Italian architect Giuseppe Pettazzi, it was the year Europe teetered on the brink of world war, and in Italy, prime minister Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party were no longer just flirting with their imperial ambitions to conquer as much of Africa as possible.
Mussolini had inherited the Italian colony of Eritrea from the European “scramble for Africa” that began in the 1890s. In 1936 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy crowned himself the Emperor of Ethiopia, a title never recognised by the international community, and from a settlement on the Eritrean Red Sea coastline, the Italians spread their colonial campaign across the Horn of Africa.
For Mussolini, Asmara was the nexus in his new Roman Empire – and the administrative centre of his Africa Orientale Italiana. He called the city “La Piccola Roma” – Africa’s little Rome. READMORE

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The stylish Cinema Impero in Asmara, built in 1937. Photograph: Brownbook

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Mussolini called the city ‘La Piccola Roma’ – Africa’s little Rome. Photograph: Natasha Stallard/Brownbook

Fascist Italy actively encouraged emigration to Eritrea and by 1939, according to a census of the same year, over half of Asmara’s population was Italian. Handed over as a blank canvas for Italy’s most radical architects, the city found its new role as an unlikely playground for futurist architecture.
Mussolini encouraged Italian architects and engineers to transform Asmara into an urban utopia, full of cinemas, cafés, imported bicycles and sycamore trees.

“[The Fiat] is the reason I became an architect. It’s a very peculiar building. Structurally it was very bold. Engineers nowadays wouldn’t dare to build a cantilever half the size of that,” says Mesfi Metuasu, a local architect and urban planner who has been working with Asmara’s buildings since 1995.