Bar Zilli is a building located in central

Asmara Asmara ( ), or Asmera, is the capital and most populous city of Eritrea, in the country's Central Region. It sits at an elevation of , making it the sixth highest capital in the world by altitude and the second highest capital in Africa. The ...

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...

. Currently, it operates as a restaurant and it serves as a commonly identifiable landmark to Asmara residents.

History

Bar Zilli was built during the late stages of Italian colonial rule and was architecturally modeled according to the art style of

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

Architecture

Bar Zilli is an easily-recognizable building that was featured in a Fodor's Architectural publication. The architecture is described as featuring a "curved façade with a mix of central vertical windows and small horizontal strips at the corners are the reasons why experts have called this structure “idiosyncratic” and “distinctive.” According to a

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

article written in 2017," The Bar Zilli building looks like an old-fashioned radio set, with windows like tuning buttons."

References

{{coord missing, Eritrea Buildings and structures in Asmara