Eritrea's capital of Asmara, 100 km inland from its coast, has occupied a space in the highlands of Eritrea for hundreds of years. During the last century alone, it has been a staging ground for Italian initiatives in East Africa, collateral of Britain’s colonial politics, and victim of the expansion of Ethiopia’s empire until 1993 when it finally became the new and sovereign state of Eritrea. Only the large cluster of buildings built in the style of the Avant-Garde betrays the multifaceted history of this strange city and its urban core almost entirely unchanged for over seventy years.