Art Deco Buildings Make Asmara, Eritrea, a Unesco Heritage Site
In the 1930s, nearly half of Asmara’s residents were Italian, earning the capital another nickname, "Little Rome." In announcing its decision on Saturday, Unesco called the city "an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context." The Eritrean government lobbied extensively for Asmara to join the World Heritage List, which recognizes sites
that have cultural, historical or social significance.
In addition to Asmara, Unesco named two other World Heritage sites in Africa on Saturday: Mbanza Kongo, the remains of the former royal capital of the Kingdom of Kongo, in present-day Angola,
and the ancestral lands of the Khomani San people, in South Africa near the borders of Botswana and Namibia.
By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURAJULY 9, 2017
The capital of Eritrea, a country with a repressive government
that many of its citizens have fled as refugees, has been designated a World Heritage site by Unesco, the United Nations cultural organization.
Hanna Simon, the country’s representative to Unesco, said the recognition brought the city "tremendous pride
and joy" as well as "a profound sense of responsibility and duty." Critics of the government say it lacks the financial resources to maintain the historic structures.
The city’s Modernist buildings include an Art Deco bowling alley
and the Fiat Tagliero building, a service station shaped something like an airplane, with a central tower supporting a pair of 60-foot cantilevered wings.
The city flourished when Eritrea was an Italian colony, from 1889 until World War II,
and it became a paradise for Italian architects, who could try out their boldest ideas there, away from Europe’s conservative cultural norms.
