Eritrea occupies 117,600 square kilometers along the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. The country achieved independence from Ethiopia on May 24, 1993, following a thirty-year war. The population stands at approximately 3.6 million people distributed across nine ethnolinguistic groups. Tigrinya speakers constitute roughly 55 percent of the population, concentrated in the central highlands around Asmara. The Tigre people, distinct from Tigrinya speakers despite the name similarity, inhabit the western lowlands and comprise approximately 30 percent. Other groups include the Saho, Afar, Bilen, Hedareb, Kunama, Nara, and Rashaida. Christianity and Islam divide the population nearly equally. The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims the largest single religious affiliation. Ge'ez, the liturgical language of the Orthodox church, survives in religious contexts though it ceased as a spoken language centuries ago.
The territory that became Eritrea entered written history through the ancient port of Adulis, which served Aksumite trade networks from approximately the first century CE. Adulis connected Red Sea commerce with highland kingdoms, handling ivory, gold, and enslaved people. The port's ruins lie near the Gulf of Zula. Italian colonization began in 1890 when Rome declared the establishment of Eritrea as a unified colonial entity, creating borders that had not previously existed as a single political unit. The Italians built Africa's first cable car system, connecting Massawa to Asmara, completed in 1937. They constructed the Fiat Tagliero Building in Asmara in 1938, a futurist service station with cantilevered wings extending 30 meters without external support.
Bahta Hagos led an uprising against Italian taxation and land seizure in 1894. Italian forces killed him in battle that same year. The Italians used Eritrea as a staging ground for the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. British forces expelled the Italians in 1941 during the East African campaign of World War II. Britain administered Eritrea under United Nations mandate until 1952. The UN Resolution 390 A federated Eritrea with Ethiopia that year, granting Eritrea autonomy over internal affairs while Ethiopia controlled defense and foreign relations. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie dissolved the federation in 1962, annexing Eritrea as a province.
Hamid Idris Awate fired the first shots of the Eritrean War of Independence on September 1, 1961, in western Eritrea. The Eritrean Liberation Front, later joined and eventually superseded by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, fought Ethiopian government forces until 1991. The war killed an estimated 65,000 Eritrean fighters. The EPLF captured Asmara on May 24, 1991. A UN-supervised referendum held in April 1993 returned 99.8 percent support for independence from 1.1 million registered voters. Isaias Afwerki became president in 1993 and remains in office with no constitutional elections held since independence.
Border conflict with Ethiopia resumed in 1998 over the town of Badme and surrounding territory. The Eritrea-Ethiopia War lasted until 2000, killing an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people on both sides. The Algiers Agreement of December 2000 established a boundary commission. The commission awarded Badme to Eritrea in 2002, but Ethiopia refused to implement the decision. The countries maintained a frozen conflict until a peace agreement in July 2018.
Asmara sits at 2,325 meters elevation on the Eritrean Highlands plateau. UNESCO inscribed the city as a World Heritage site in 2017, recognizing its concentration of modernist architecture from the 1930s. The city contains over 400 buildings in rationalist, futurist, novecento, and Art Deco styles built during the late Italian colonial period. The Cinema Impero opened in 1937 with 800 seats. The Asmara Opera House, completed in 1920, seats 600. The Cathedral of Asmara, consecrated in 1922, stands 57 meters tall with Lombard Romanesque design. The Enda Mariam Orthodox Cathedral shares the same neighborhood. The Al Khulafa Al Rashiudin Mosque, completed in 1938, serves the Muslim quarter. This architectural density resulted from Mussolini's plan to relocate 500,000 Italian settlers to Eritrea, a plan disrupted by World War II.