![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The Hotel Torino, in the old section of the city of Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1340499.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
There’s spaghetti and pizza, cappuccinos and café lattes. The local cinema shows La Dolce Vita, and most people will answer you in Italian. But this isn’t Italy. It’s Asmara, Eritrea’s capital on the edge of the Horn of Africa.
The country, a former Italian colony, gained its independence in 1993 after 50 years of turmoil — the British expelled the Italians in 1941 before Ethiopia annexed the region in the 1950s — but has retained a strong Italian heritage.
“Everybody in Italy has someone in his family that lived or worked in Eritrea,” says photographer Clara Vannucci, whose own great-grandfather worked as a doctor in the former colony. And yet, she says, nobody in Italy seems to talk about it today. “At school, we spend a lot of time studying World War II but we didn’t study Eritrea, even though it’s part of the history of our country.”
Driven by a desire to learn more, Vannucci traveled to Eritrea. Most journalists have been banned from the country as the government, led by Isaias Afwerki, has “imposed a reign of fear through systematic and extreme abuses of the population,” according to a 2015 United Nations Human Rights Council report. So Vannucci, accompanied by documentary director Manfredi Lucibello, traveled on a tourism visa rather than a media visa. As she worked in the streets of Asmara, she’d often have to hide their cameras—but the fact that she is Italian helped. “People would just talk with me,” she says. “They would hear me speaking Italian and couldn’t wait to hear all about Italy.”
This curiosity is understandable, says the 30-year-old photographer. As the political and economic situation in Eritrea has remained dire – just last week fighting was reported on the border with Ethiopia – young Eritreans are increasingly trying to leave the country for Europe. “There’s only electricity and water a two hours a day,” she says. “There’s no future. There are no jobs.”
But Vannucci doesn’t want her work to be about the country’s current political state. “It’s about history,” she says.
Clara Vannucci is a documentary photographer based in Italy.
Alice Gabriner, who edited this photo essay, is a senior international photo editor at TIME.
Olivier Laurent is the editor of TIME LightBox. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @olivierclaurent
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Cinema Impero, an art deco-style cinema in Asmara, Eritrea 2016.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1320233.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea 2016. Asmara.Caravanserraglio market. A woman at the market in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1330866.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero A night bar in the city of Keren, Eritrea.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1360465.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The empty building of a former restaurant in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1340258.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero A woman at the berbere spice mixing market.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1390131.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Exterior of the Cinema Roma, in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1400191.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea 2016. Asmara. Street at night time. On the street at night in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1320736.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The berbere spice mixing market in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1390140.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Interior of Asmara's Opera house.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1390636.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The swimming pool in Asmara, built in 1945 by Arturo Mezzedimi.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1380772.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Children playing next to a Fiat Uno car on the streets of Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1350426.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The Italian School of Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1370821.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Bar Vittoria in Asmara, with original design from the 1950's.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1330415.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The Fiat Tagliero service station, by architect Giuseppe Pettazzi.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1345.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero A staircase in Asmara, by architect A. Bibolotti.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1380107.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Fiat 600 used for driving test in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1325.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero A graveyard of military tanks and other relics of war in Asmara.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1380187.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Orthodox Church in Massawa, Eritrea, 2016. Wedding ceremony. A wedding ceremony at an Orthodox Church in Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1350828.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The Hotel Torino, in the old section of the city of Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1340499.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero The Bank of Italy building, built by the Italian's in the 1920's.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1340579.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Street view of Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1340531.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Portion of the railroad from Asmara to Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1701.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero Streets damaged during war time in Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1760.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Eritrea - Cinema Impero A man on a street in Massawa.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1340524.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Dissie island, dahlak archipelago. Fishermen looking at the sea. Dissie Island, dahlak archipelago](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eritrea-clara-vannucci-1350003.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
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