Asmara Palace Hotel

Rooms and decor

Picture a big city hotel perched on a plateau at 2,300 metres, where the air stays cool year-round and the sky reads wider and clearer than most African capitals — that's the first impression at Asmara Palace Hotel, the only 5-star in Asmara. The building is large and grand in the way it was built back when it was the Intercontinental Asmara: a high, open lobby in warm tones with East African patterns. Walk in and you immediately sense it's a crossroads for many nationalities — international-agency staff, diplomats, and adventurers who flew a long way. The roughly 250 rooms and suites spread across several wings. Beds are soft, and plenty of guests say they sleep better than expected; linens are clean, and some rooms have balconies for a full lungful of cool highland air. The high-floor rooms facing the garden or the mountains are the ones reviewers single out, because you wake to morning light and the rare skyline of the Eritrean Highlands. The decor isn't sleek and new — it carries the feel of a once-thriving international hotel from the 1990s and 2000s. If you like a little nostalgia and don't need cutting-edge design, you'll get on with it fine.

Food and amenities

What keeps this hotel at number one in Asmara is the amenities you simply can't find elsewhere in the city. There are two pools — an indoor one for windy days and an outdoor one ringed by a lounge deck — plus a spa with several treatment rooms, a sauna, and a full gym, which is remarkable in a country where options like this barely exist. The main dining room serves an international breakfast buffet and Asian-Western menus the rest of the day, but the loudest praise goes to the Italian restaurant and coffee. This is a fresh holdover from the era when Italy colonized Eritrea into the mid-20th century: fresh-made pasta, dark espresso, and macchiatos and cappuccinos with foam the barista nails the authentic Italian way. Many guests say the coffee here goes toe-to-toe with cafes in Italy. The lobby has a bar that stays open late, room service, and — crucially — an in-house money-changer. For anyone arriving in Eritrea for the first time and discovering that international ATMs don't work here, that service is a lifesaver in the first days. There's an airport shuttle, parking, meeting rooms, and event space fit for mid-sized seminars, which makes the hotel a meeting hub for government, NGOs, and the small tour groups that make it into the country.

Location and getting there

The location is smartly placed for a city with limited choices. The hotel sits in the Maitemenai district on Warsay Street, near the UN compound, which makes it the first base for UN staff and diplomats flying in to work. It's only about 2 kilometres from Asmara International Airport (ASM), a 7 to 10-minute drive — very convenient if you land late or have an early onward flight. A few minutes out you hit Sematat Avenue, the main road into old Asmara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site listed as Asmara: A Modernist African City and packed with Italian-era modernist architecture: the legendary Cinema Impero, the Fiat Tagliero service station shaped like an aircraft and found nowhere else on Earth, and the red-brick Lombard-style Catholic Cathedral. Getting around Asmara is fairly safe compared with other capitals in the region — taxis and minibuses work, and the hotel arranges rental cars with drivers for trips outside the city, like the winding mountain road down to the Red Sea at Massawa. It's an ideal launchpad for exploring Eritrea at your own pace.

Things to know before booking

Straight talk to help you decide. First, as many reviews agree, the 5-star rating here doesn't match an international 5-star. The building and a lot of the hardware are aging — furniture in the rooms and some public corners look their age, a few bathrooms show patch repairs, and the shower pressure is softer than the price suggests. If you expect a fully loaded European or Asian 5-star, adjust your head: you're getting the best room in the city, not the best room you've ever stayed in. Second, Wi-Fi and the power and water cut in and out with Asmara's infrastructure. The country's internet is very slow by today's standards, so anyone with online meetings or large uploads should pack a backup data SIM and schedule around dropped signal. Power fails some nights and the hotel fires up a generator; hot water can disappear in some rooms for stretches. Third is the high price relative to the condition, and the in-house restaurant and bar charge several times the rates outside — on a budget, eat your main meals in the old town for better value and more local flavor. Finally, visas and entry aren't a last-minute decision: plan ahead with an agency or embassy. The hotel itself is helpful and will assist with everything, but it can't skip the Eritrean government's steps.

Our take

After reading through real guest reviews and the broader picture of Eritrea, Asmara Palace Hotel is the most straightforward answer to the question "where should I stay in Asmara?" — the safest, most complete, and best English-speaking option in a city where the alternatives are older hotels with patchy upkeep. If you're a UN staffer, diplomat, business traveler, or adventurer who wants a comfortable base before heading out to explore Asmara's charming UNESCO World Heritage centre, sip strong Italian coffee in the morning, swim in the indoor pool after a long day, and lean on the in-house money-changer for peace of mind — this is the easy call. But if you measure by an international 5-star yardstick and expect everything new, you may feel you're overpaying for the room you get. Overall we give it 7.8/10 — best suited to business and adventure travelers who understand Eritrea's context and value safety and completeness over outright luxury.