Eritrea travel guide

Saturday morning in Asmara and, after a cappuccino, the city's inhabitants are found cycling down the palm-lined central boulevard, past its dilapidated theatre, the Art Deco cinema, and the Catholic cathedral, and enjoying the cooler temperatures that the high-altitude city affords. Eritrea has the kind of attractions that should pull in visitors: archaeological ruins, beautiful beaches along its long Red Sea coastline, and wildly creative Modernist architecture, much of it built under Mussolini during Italy's occupation.

Sadly, though, the country’s recent history has kept it off the map – both literally, and for tourists. Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1896 until World War II, then a province of Ethiopia, which annexed it in the early 1960s, triggering a 30-year war. Eritrea eventually declared independence in 1993, but peace was short-lived and since 1998, tensions have bubbled along the Ethiopian border, with periods of outright war and more than 80,000 people killed. In 2020 Eritrea and Ethiopia became involved in the Tigray War against the Tigray people and a 2022 ceasefire changed little on the ground. Tourism, for now, barely exists beyond the summer visitors from the Eritrean diaspora. Even organised tours are subject to local authority restrictions, limiting travel to just a few towns and sites, some contingent on group size.