Dekemhare is one of those towns that tell the story of colonial Eritrea without needing museums: you just have to walk its streets. 40 km from Asmara, it was the great agro-industrial heart of the Italian empire in East Africa, the 'wine town' that produced wine, pasta, canned goods and oil for the whole colony, with thousands of Italians living among modern wineries and factories.
From that golden age, 1930s rationalist and art deco buildings remain today, many still standing but disused: industrial sheds, old wineries, cinemas, shops and villas that make up a surprising architectural ensemble for such a small town. The town later suffered the hardships of the long war of independence, with bombing and fighting that left their mark.
This guide covers Dekemhare from a practical angle: what to see of its colonial and industrial heritage, how to get there from Asmara with the right permit, and how to fit it into a route to the country's historic south. It is a visit for those who enjoy architecture, history and authentic corners far from the crowds.
Dekemhare was developed by the Italians as an industrial and agricultural centre of the colony of Eritrea, and it became the leading wine-making and canning hub of Italian East Africa. In 1938 it had around 12,000 inhabitants, half of them Italian, and it was full of modern art deco factories and wineries. With Italy's defeat in the Second World War and the later annexation by Ethiopia, its industry declined, and during the war of independence (1961-1991) the town suffered bombing and fighting that damaged much of its heritage. Today it is a quiet town that still bears the imprint of that industrial past. The full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of Eritrea at 2.300 metres: Asmara, the astonishing art deco city on the World Heritage List, and the temperate plateau from which the legendary railway descends to the Red Sea.
Read the history of Asmara and the central plateau →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the Italians arrived, Dekemhare was a small town on the central Eritrean plateau, in a fertile farming area south-east of what would become Asmara. Like the rest of the highlands, it belonged to the Orthodox Christian world of northern Abyssinia. It had villages of farmers, stone churches and a rural life tied to the land and to livestock. Its mild highland climate and good farming soils made it attractive for agriculture.
When Italy consolidated the colony of Eritrea from 1890 onwards, colonial planners saw the plateau as ideal ground for European-style farming settlement, thanks to its cool climate. While Asmara became the administrative capital, other towns were given specific roles. Dekemhare's role was to be the great agro-industrial centre: the place where the produce of the Eritrean countryside was turned into goods for the whole colony.
With that purpose, the town began to grow and to fill up with Italians who came to set up vineyards, farms and factories. The traditional Dekemhare of highland farmers was gradually covered by a new layer of colonial planning: ruler-straight streets, modern buildings and an economy geared to export within the empire.
Dekemhare reached its peak in the 1930s, at the height of Fascist Italy's imperial project. The town became the main agro-industrial hub of the colony and later of Italian East Africa, formed after the invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. Its speciality was wine: the surrounding land filled with vineyards, and the town with wineries and bottling plants that made wine for the whole colony. People called it the 'city of wine'.
But wine wasn't the only thing made there. Dekemhare had pasta factories, industrial bakeries, canneries and oil plants, which made it a key part of the empire's supply chain in the region. By 1938, at its height, the town had around 12,000 inhabitants, about 6,000 of them permanent Italian residents. That huge share shows how important it was as a colonial enclave.
That economic boom showed up in the architecture. Between 1936 and 1938, many Art Deco and Rationalist buildings went up: wineries, industrial sheds, shops, cinemas, offices and villas that made Dekemhare a modern city in miniature, a younger sibling of dazzling Asmara. Much of that architecture survives, and today it is the clearest record of the town's golden age.
Dekemhare's prosperity depended on the Italian colonial project, and when that project collapsed, the town went into decline. During the Second World War, British forces defeated Italy in East Africa and took control of Eritrea from 1941. Many of the Italians who ran Dekemhare's industry left, and agro-industrial production suffered. The UN federated Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1952, and the country was annexed in 1962. The town's economy never got its momentum back.
From 1961, the tragedy of war came on top of the economic decline. The long Eritrean War of Independence (1961-1991) turned the plateau into a battlefield, and because of its location Dekemhare was fought over and hit hard. Over the decades of conflict the town suffered ground fighting, air raids and artillery fire, which damaged its infrastructure and much of its colonial architecture.
Those war years left visible scars and, as across Eritrea, a population hardened by suffering and resistance. The once modern, prosperous town was in many ways frozen in time, with silent factories and 1930s buildings marked by neglect and fighting.
After independence in 1991, confirmed by the 1993 referendum, Dekemhare became a quiet town on the central plateau, away from the bustle and the main tourist routes. Its wine industry never regained its old glory. Today the town lives mainly from farming, local trade and services, at a slow pace very different from its years of factories and settlers.
Yet that same standstill has preserved an unusual heritage. Dekemhare keeps a remarkable collection of 1930s Rationalist and Art Deco buildings: wineries, industrial sheds, cinemas, civic buildings and villas. They make it a natural companion to modernist Asmara, a World Heritage Site. It is a lesser-known but very revealing chapter of Italy's ambition to industrialise and Europeanise the Eritrean plateau.
For today's traveller, Dekemhare is a stop for anyone curious about history and architecture, and a waypoint on the road to the country's archaeologically rich south. Walking its streets means reading, in its façades and silent factories, the rise and fall of the Italian empire's 'city of wine'. It also means remembering the thirty-year war that shaped the identity of independent Eritrea.
