Asmara's modernist architecture -- Asmara was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017, the first modernist city anywhere to be listed in its entirety. The Italians built most of central Asmara between 1935 and 1941, and it remains an astonishing collection of Art Deco cinemas, Futurist petrol stations, Rationalist government buildings, and streamlined apartment blocks. The Fiat Tagliero service station, with its 30-meter cantilevered concrete wings shaped like an airplane, is the showpiece, but the entire city center is the attraction. Walk Liberation Avenue, duck into the Cinema Roma or Cinema Impero, and have a macchiato at one of the pavement cafes. Nowhere else in Africa looks like this.
Massawa's old town -- Massawa was battered during the independence war and has never been fully rebuilt, which gives it a haunting beauty. The old port town sits on two islands connected by causeways, its coral-block buildings showing layers of Ottoman, Egyptian, and Italian influence. The narrow alleyways come alive at night. The heat is ferocious, the seafood is fresh, and the atmosphere is unlike anywhere else in Eritrea. It is also your departure point for the Dahlak Islands.
Diving the Dahlak Islands -- The Dahlak archipelago offers some of the most unspoiled diving in the Red Sea. Over 200 islands, most uninhabited, with pristine coral reefs, shipwrecks, dolphins, dugongs, sea turtles, and manta rays. The infrastructure is minimal -- you arrange everything through an agency in Massawa and need a permit -- but that is precisely why the reefs remain in such good condition. Only a handful of divers visit each year.
The heritage railway to Nefasit -- The Italians built a railway from Massawa to Asmara between 1887 and 1911, an engineering marvel that climbs from sea level to 2,350 meters through 39 tunnels and across 65 bridges. The line was destroyed during the independence war and painstakingly rebuilt by Eritrean volunteers using the original Italian-made steam locomotives. Today you can ride a restored steam train from Asmara down through the escarpment to Nefasit or Arbaroba -- a three-hour round trip through spectacular mountain scenery, hauled by a century-old Mallet locomotive. Arrangements are made through the Ministry of Tourism.
The ruins near Senafe -- Southern Eritrea holds archaeological sites from the pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods that rival anything across the border in Ethiopia. Qohaito, on a high plateau at the edge of the Great Rift Valley, was a major city from roughly 5000 BC through the 6th century AD -- and an estimated 80 to 90 percent remains unexcavated. A few kilometers south of Senafe, Metera has obelisks, temples, and the oldest known examples of Ge'ez script. These sites see almost no visitors and are deeply atmospheric.