Eritrea's 'City Of Dreams' Given UNESCO Heritage Listing

Once known as "Little Rome", Eritrea's capital Asmara boasts buildings unlike anywhere else in Africa, a legacy of its Italian colonial past when architects were given free reign for structures judged too avant garde back home

The people of Eritrea have long said their capital Asmara is like no other city in Africa, and on Saturday the UN agreed, designating it a World Heritage site.

The bowling alley in Asmara, Eritrea's capital, has an art-deco style interior with coloured glass

AFP report continues:

The proclamation ends a long-running quest by Eritrean authorities to have the city's unique architecture, which includes an art-deco bowling alley with coloured glass windows and a petrol station built to resemble a soaring aeroplane, recognized by the UN cultural body, UNESCO.

It's also a rare example of positive world recognition for the Horn of Africa nation that is a major source of migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe due to the country's repressive policies.

"The city's recognition as a heritage site of outstanding universal value fills us with tremendous pride and joy, but also with a profound sense of responsibility and duty," said Hanna Simon, Eritrea's permanent delegate to UNESCO.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the World Heritage Committee in the Polish city of Krakow.

The Eritrean capital Asmara boasts a unique petrol station with soaring 18-metre (60-foot) concrete wings which was designed to look like a plane taking off

A former Italian colony, most of the futuristic designs of the Eritrean capital date back to the rule of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini from 1936 to 1941.

Architects whose designs were unwelcome in conservative European cities found a place in Asmara at a time when about half of the city's population was Italian and the city was known as 'Piccola Roma', or "Little Rome".

While the modernist architecture of other Eritrean cities was destroyed during a decades-long war of liberation from Ethiopia, Asmara's survived and was declared a national monument by the government in 2001, which refers to it as Africa's "City of Dream" (sic).

But efforts to restore the marble facades and Roman-style pillars of the city's theatres and cinemas have been hampered by a shortage of money and local expertise, city authorities say.