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Asmara
Capital and largest city of Eritrea

Asmara

Asmara, or Asmera, is the capital and most populous city of Eritrea, in the country's Central Region.

Plan a trip to Asmara→From Port Sudan

It sits at an elevation of 2,325 metres (7,628 ft), making it the sixth-highest capital in the world by altitude and the second-highest capital in Africa. The city is located at the tip of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Eritrean Highlands and the Great Rift Valley in neighbouring Ethiopia. In 2017, the city was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its well-preserved Italian colonial modernist architecture. According to local traditions, the city was founded after four separate villages unified to live together peacefully after long periods of conflict. Asmara existed as a major settlement for over half a millennium and enjoyed some importance as it stood on the trade route to Massawa.

Get in

Getting to Asmara

If you are entering the country without a visa, as a holder of an Eritrean ID card in combination with a foreign passport, you are required to register with the Immigration and Nationality office in Asmara within seven business days of entry into the country.

  1. 01
    Asmara International Airport

    As of 2023, the national carrier Eritrea Airlines flies to Addis Ababa, Cairo, Jeddah and Khartoum.

See

Worth seeing

Asmara's main attraction is its World Heritage listed colonial Italian architecture. The palm-lined main street "Harnet Avenue" is colloquially referred to as "Kombishtato" (a creole of the neighbourhood's original name: Campo Cintato) meaning fenced area.

  1. 01
    Asmara Theatre

    The architectural style is a combination of Romanesque Revival and neoclassicism.

  2. 02
    Great Mosque of Asmara
  3. 03
    National Museum of Eritrea
  4. 04
    Church of Our Lady of the Rosary

    Often just referred to as "the cathedral", this former Roman Catholic church was built in the early 1920s in a Lombard Romanesque style.

  5. 05
    Enda Mariam Cathedral
Do

Things to do

If you are in Asmara for a short stay, the best thing to do after you're done sightseeing in this city is to head for the outskirts where the scenery is stunning at the very least. Unless you come from a high altitude area yourself, you may need a couple of days of strolling in Asmara to get your body used to the thin dry air at 2,300 m.

Eat

Where to eat

  1. 01
    Bar Zilli

    Eritrean restaurant housed in one of the most iconic colonial Art Deco buildings.

How locals move

Getting around Asmara the local way

  • Get aroundThere also white minibus-lines running on the main streets of the city, which run on fixed routes but without fixed stops or signs.
  • Get aroundFinally there are the yellow taxis, most of which also run on fixed routes on the main streets like the white minivans.
  • Get aroundThey have a similar system to the minivans, and the fare is Nkf 5.
  • Get aroundIt is perhaps better to take the bus or contact one of the national tour agencies (ask at the information desk at the airport upon arrival).
  • Go nextThere is one narrow-gauge train line, from Asmara to Massawa, but it is driven by a slow steam-engine which only runs for chartered tours.

From Wikivoyage: Asmara, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.

Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Royal mania indo (CC BY 4.0), Wikimedia Commons.