Asmara

Asmara is one of Africa’s clearest surviving examples of early twentieth-century planned urbanism. Its centre developed through successive plans between 1893 and 1941, combining an orthogonal street grid with radial routes, civic spaces and zoning adapted to the highland topography.

The built fabric is unusually coherent, with modernist and rationalist cinemas, shops, offices, industrial buildings, housing and religious structures forming a human-scale city rather than a collection of isolated monuments. UNESCO’s World Heritage designation protects both the planned centre and indigenous neighbourhoods such as Arbate Asmera and Abbashawel. Current conservation work therefore addresses an urban system as a whole: buildings, streets, public spaces, views, mixed uses and the need to accommodate contemporary development without eroding the city’s distinctive scale.