Fiat Tagliero, Cinema Impero and UNESCO Modernist Asmara

In 2017, UNESCO inscribed the entire historic perimeter of Asmara as a World Heritage site under the title Asmara: A Modernist African City. Between 1935 and 1941, at a time when conservative building codes restricted avant-garde architects in Rome and Milan, young Italian engineers and architects treated this highland plateau as an open canvas for Futurist, Rationalist, Novecento and Art Deco experimentation. Because later decades saw little high-rise redevelopment, over four hundred modernist structures survive intact in everyday use.

Fiat Tagliero: the concrete aeroplane that defied gravity

Standing at the south-western entrance to the central avenues along Sematat Avenue, the Fiat Tagliero Service Station (1938) is the undisputed icon of Eritrean modernism. Designed by engineer Giuseppe Pettazzi at the height of the Italian Futurist movement's obsession with speed, flight and machinery, the building takes the literal form of an aeroplane poised for take-off: a central glass-and-concrete cockpit tower flanked by two 15-metre-long reinforced-concrete wings that jut horizontally into thin air without a single supporting column.

At the time of construction, municipal building authorities insisted that the cantilevers would collapse and ordered wooden props to remain under the wings. According to local architectural lore, Pettazzi was so confident in his structural calculations that on opening day he climbed onto the roof and threatened the contractor with a revolver until the wooden supports were knocked away. The wings did not budge a millimetre, and they still float cleanly above the roundabout more than eighty-five years later.

Cinema Impero, Cinema Roma and the Casa del Fascio

Asmara's 1930s builders poured equal creativity into cinema palaces and civic halls along Harnet Avenue and neighbouring streets:

• Cinema Impero (1937, by Mario Messina): an Art Deco masterpiece on Harnet Avenue whose warm red-terracotta and white facade is bisected by three vertical fins spelling out CINEMA IMPERO alongside forty-five illuminated white glass portholes and twin curved entrance doors with semicircular metal handles that join into full circles. Step inside to see the original stucco bas-reliefs of dancing figures and African antelopes in the auditorium and the vintage Gaggia espresso bar in the foyer.
• Cinema Odeon, Cinema Capitol and Cinema Roma (1937): a five-minute walk south on Sematat Avenue, Cinema Roma pairs a curved two-tone marble exterior with a dramatic sweeping interior staircase and a classic café counter (have a macchiato inside).
• Selam Hotel, Bristol Hotel and Villa Quarter: across the side streets, ship-inspired Nautical Moderne apartment blocks feature curved corner balconies, porthole windows and geometric stair towers.