Eritrea

Consisting of 124 small islands, the Dahlak Archipelago is uninhabited apart from four islands. It’s here, since Roman times, that pearl fisheries have been famous, along with its diverse marine life and sea-birds. Uniquely as well it was the Dahlak Islanders whom were among the first people in the Horn of Africa to adopt Islam. Because of this an independent Muslim state emerged from the island in the 7th Century, which was later conquered by Yemen, followed by the Ottoman Turks and was once part of the Italian colony of Eritrea from the 1890s. Most contrasting of all is an abandoned Soviet Navy base left over during the Cold War when Ethiopia allied with the Soviet Union.

Eritrea holds the most easterly extent of the Sahel region was stretches all the way across the continent, following the southern edge of the Sahara, to reach the coastal nation of Mauritania.

Capital city of Eritrea, Asmara is most well-known for its highly preserved modernist Italian architecture owed to Mussolini’s vision to transform the city in to the centre of a second Roman Empire. With the architects given total freedom to unleash their imagination this has created a vast range of buildings to marvel at whose influences are drawn from ancient-Roman, futurism and cubism styles. Aside from wandering the streets and experiencing urban Eritrean culture at its best, a visit to mountainous forest and wildlife reserve known as the Martyrs National Park is worth visiting for its quiet plateaus punctuated by chasms and gorges.