This unique architectural gem was just named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Update July 8, 2017: During a recent meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Poland, Asmara has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Here's our interview with some of the preservationists who worked for years to make that happen.
An eccentric emblem of Modernist design, the Fiat Tagliero gas station is one of a kind. With broad, streamlined, nearly 100-foot-long overhangs that resemble the wings of an early propeller plane, this structure by Giuseppe Pettazzi would stand out anywhere. But in its present home, Asmara, Eritrea, the unlikely service station from the late '30s actually makes sense in a cityscape filled with Rationalist design and sweeping curves. It?s the most recognized symbol of this little-known Modernist metropolis in the Horn of Africa, originally commissioned by Italian Fascists in the ?30s. Along with blocks and blocks of other such buildings, the Futurist Fiat Tagliero has been submitted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, part of a concerted effort by the Asmara Heritage Project (AHP) and others to protect and preserve this overlooked architectural gem.
"Asmara should be regarded as a central part of the Modernist canon," says Dr. Edward Denison, an architecture expert and professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, who first visited Asmara as a tourist in 1997 and has worked professionally to help preserve a...