Adulis is one of the great archaeological treasures of Eritrea and the Horn of Africa: the ruins of what was the main port of the Kingdom of Aksum, one of the most powerful and least known civilisations of the ancient world. For more than a thousand years, ivory, gold and goods from the African interior left through this port on Zula Bay, while products and ideas from Rome, Egypt, Arabia and India came in, at one of the great trading crossroads of the ancient world.
The name Adulis appears in classical sources such as the 'Periplus of the Erythraean Sea', a 1st-century Greco-Roman sailing guide that describes it as the port through which the Kingdom of Aksum traded with the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. Excavations, begun in the early 20th century and resumed in recent times, have uncovered churches, buildings and imported objects that confirm its role in Afro-Eurasian trade.
This guide explains how to visit Adulis with a practical eye: how to get there from Massawa with the right permit, what you can see of the site and its bay, and what historical context to keep in mind. It's a visit for lovers of ancient history, letting you walk the ground where the Kingdom of Aksum connected with Rome and the Indian Ocean, in a little-visited corner of the Red Sea.
Adulis was the great seaport of the Kingdom of Aksum, the power that ruled the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia between the 1st and 8th centuries, and a key piece of ancient world trade between Africa, the Mediterranean, Arabia and India. Mentioned in the 'Periplus of the Erythraean Sea' and by ancient writers, it exported ivory, gold, hides and slaves, and imported goods from Rome, Egypt and India. After Aksum converted to Christianity in the 4th century, the city had churches, some of which archaeology has uncovered. It declined as Aksum waned and as Islam spread across the Red Sea. The full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓A thousand years of Red Sea history: the port of Massawa with its Ottoman, Egyptian and Italian layers, the almost untouched Dahlak islands and the ruins of Adulis, Aksum's commercial gateway.
Read the history of The Red Sea: Massawa and Dahlak →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
To understand Adulis, you first need to know the Kingdom of Aksum, one of the great powers of the ancient world and one of Africa's most important yet least-known civilisations. Between the 1st and 8th centuries AD, Aksum ruled the Horn of Africa, covering parts of today's Eritrea and Ethiopia, and at times controlled territory in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. Its power rested on trade, and to trade it needed access to the sea. That access was Adulis.
Adulis stood beside the Gulf of Zula, on the Red Sea coast. It was the great port that linked the Kingdom of Aksum to the rest of the world. Goods from the African interior left through here: ivory, gold, hides, incense, exotic animals and slaves. Goods from the Mediterranean, Egypt, Arabia and India came in: wine, oil, glass, pottery, textiles, metals and luxury objects. Adulis was where Africa joined the great trade routes of antiquity.
Classical sources recorded how important Adulis was. The 'Periplus of the Erythraean Sea', a 1st-century Greco-Roman sailing manual, describes the port and its trade in detail, and other ancient writers called it the main trading hub of the Aksumite kingdom. Together with the archaeology, these written accounts confirm that for centuries Adulis was one of the busiest and richest ports on the Red Sea.
Adulis was much more than a local port. It was a crossroads of the global trade of its time. Through it, the Kingdom of Aksum was part of a network that linked the Roman and Byzantine empires, Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, southern Arabia, India and, beyond that, the wider Indian Ocean world. Finds at the site confirm Adulis's place in Afro-Eurasian trade: Roman amphorae, Indian pottery, Sasanian glass and South Arabian inscriptions.
That trade made Aksum so prosperous that it minted its own gold, silver and bronze coins, something only the great states of the age did. Adulis was the maritime engine of that economy. Here riches were loaded and unloaded, merchants speaking many languages crossed paths, and news arrived from across the known world. The city had public buildings, warehouses and houses, and later temples, all built from local basalt and coral limestone.
A famous document also shows how much Adulis mattered: the 'Monumentum Adulitanum'. This was a set of ancient inscriptions recording a king's conquests. The inscriptions are now lost, but the traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes copied them in the 6th century, and they made the site's name famous among scholars of the ancient world. In short, Adulis was Africa's window on the world, and the world's window on Africa.
In the 4th century, the Kingdom of Aksum took a historic step and adopted Christianity. Along with Armenia and the Roman Empire, it became one of the first Christian states in the world. The conversion also changed Adulis, which filled with churches. Excavations have identified basilicas at the site, along with a large church that probably served as the city's cathedral in the 6th and 7th centuries. They show how early and how deeply the region became Christian, a legacy that lives on in the Orthodox Tewahedo Church of today's Eritrea.
But the golden age did not last. From the 7th century onwards, several factors combined to bring about the decline of Adulis and of Aksum itself. As Islam spread across Arabia and the Red Sea, it reshaped trade routes and the regional balance of power. Sea trade passed to other hands and other ports, and Aksum gradually lost its privileged access to the sea and its prosperity. Adulis depended entirely on that trade, and so the city went into decline.
Eventually Adulis was abandoned, buried under sand and forgotten. The great port that had connected Africa with Rome and India became a heap of ruins beside a quiet bay. Centuries later, the region's maritime role passed to other ports such as Massawa. The memory of Adulis survived mainly in ancient texts, waiting for archaeology to bring it back.
Modern interest in Adulis began in the 19th century. A French mission carried out a first survey of the site in 1840, and the first scientific excavations came in the early 20th century. In 1906 a German expedition led by R. Sundström worked at the site and uncovered a large structure. The following year, in 1907, the Italian R. Paribeni excavated there and found many buildings, including ordinary houses. After a long gap, the French researcher Francis Anfray resumed work in 1961-1962.
More recently, new archaeological campaigns with international and Italian teams have excavated Adulis again. They have shown how large and rich the site was, and confirmed finds such as the great church, or cathedral, and many imported objects that show the role Adulis played in ancient trade. This work has deepened what we know about Aksum's port and the ancient history of the Horn of Africa, and put Adulis on the map of the region's major archaeological sites.
Today Adulis is an active excavation that you can visit as a day trip from Massawa. You will need the relevant permit and, above all, a good guide who can provide the historical context. This is not a restored monumental site. It is a place where foundations, walls and the remains of churches rise from the ground beside the Gulf of Zula. Walking around Adulis, you tread the ground where an African civilisation connected with Rome, Egypt, Arabia and India, and you glimpse a fascinating, little-known chapter of world history.
