Although ordinary soldiers had been delighted, and amazed, to find a modern city, all ice cream, cinemas, Alfa-Romeos and gorgeous girls, their superiors considered Asmara too good for the locals. Their attitude was that the Italians had overspent and that it was only right to strip the city of modern machinery that could be used more profitably elsewhere by insatiably business-minded Brits.
To this day, many of the seemingly modern buildings in the city center lack running water, bathrooms and lavatories. While, at the edge of the city, the choking Medeber market is witness to huge numbers of Asmarinos recycling absolutely anything that can be turned into something useful: beds from lorry springs, chairs and tables from oil cans.
The city center is now, effectively, a listed zone where new buildings will only rarely be allowed. The Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Programme was set up in 1996 to record the city's architecture and to educate children, as well as business people and developers across the country, to look after their unparalleled urban heritage. Asmara may yet become a Unesco World Heritage Site. It fully deserves to be.
Perhaps the most unexpected restoration has been that of the enchanting Eritrean State Railway, which spirals in death-defying fashion down the escarpment from Asmara to meet the Red Sea at Massawa, another fascinating, although heavily war-damaged city, and one of the very hottest on earth.
The narrow-gauge railway, built by the Italians, has been rebuilt without outside help. National pride has seen to that. The necessary expertise lay in the hands and memories of long retired railwaymen, who have returned to bring the railway back to life.
There are, of course, no cheap flights to Eritrea. Tourism is in its infancy. There is little water, most of it unsafe to drink. The country is poor. It can be very hot indeed. Border disputes might break out at any time. Yet, where else will you find a city like Asmara? Unthreatening. Unexpected. Africa with a Neapolitan ice-cream scoop.
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