The Italians of Eritrea: Lives Between Two Worlds (1940–1975)

By Pascuale Santoro

There were years when Africa seemed closer than the sea that separated it from Italy. Years when the streets of Asmara shimmered like a promise suspended between two worlds, and the children born there Italians by blood, Africans by breath grew up without knowing where one homeland ended and the other began. Their laughter echoed in cobbled courtyards, their games followed the rhythm of two cultures intertwined, and their hearts carried an unspoken question: where do we truly belong?

Asmara was a city of contradictions and harmonies. Wide avenues lined with jacaranda trees led to piazzas where Italian cafés spilled their aromas into the red earth. At sunset, the mountains glowed pink and ochre, and the voices of street vendors mingled with the hum of Italian cars. It was a city built carefully over decades, stone by stone, layer by layer by Italians who brought with them architectural precision, discipline, and a love of order. And yet, it was also a city of improvisation, of local life finding cracks in the European veneer: goats wandering near piazzas, children chasing chickens across open courtyards, spices scenting the air where espresso once ruled.

Arrival of War

In 1940, the wind of war arrived. It swept across the Red Sea and into the highland city, bringing the world’s chaos to the quiet elegance of Asmara. Italy was drawn into a global conflict whose tremors reached even the farthest corners of its empire. Even when the Italian Empire collapsed and flags changed color, the Italians of Eritrea did not disappear. They stayed because Eritrea was home. Stone by stone, they had built houses; hands skilled in iron and diesel had built workshops; fields had been sown with intimate knowledge of the red earth. Their lives had become inseparable from the land.

When the British entered Asmara in 1941, many Italians were still children. They remember the sound of tanks rolling down familiar streets, the sudden silence that followed gunfire, the uneasy feeling of being foreigners in the city where they had always been at home. Families huddled indoors, listening to distant artillery fire, uncertain of what tomorrow would bring. And yet, life resumed. Stores reopened, cinemas screened new films, cafés poured coffee and sambuca, and children returned to school. Asmara remained Asmara: elegant, orderly, radiant a small Europe in the Horn of Africa, resisting the upheavals beyond its borders.

Some Italians spoke of nights when the city seemed suspended, as if holding its breath. The scent of burning wood or gunpowder would linger in the air, mixing with the familiar aroma of freshly baked bread. Yet even in those moments, the rhythms of everyday life returned: neighbors repairing fences, children playing in alleys, barbers opening their shops before dawn. Survival and normalcy existed side by side, and the Italians of Eritrea learned early that home was not only geography but resilience.

A Mosaic of Lives

By the 1950s, Eritrea had become a living laboratory of coexistence. Italians, Eritreans, Greeks, Armenians, and Yemenites mingled in a daily choreography of commerce, conversation, and culture. Italians born there spoke Tigrino naturally, navigated markets and desert tracks, and knew the roads to Massaua, Keren, and Adi Ugri as intimately as any local. They were a hybrid generation, fluent in multiple cultures, moving between worlds without ever questioning the contours of their belonging.

Daily life in Asmara was a delicate balance of identity. Children played barefoot in courtyards, chasing balls stitched from rags, while elders smoked strong Eritrean coffee under the shade of acacia trees. Shops sold Italian pasta alongside local grains, espresso alongside tej honey wine, and every street had a storyteller, a baker, or a mechanic whose expertise transcended origin. Families gathered for long afternoons, telling stories in Italian and Tigrino, laughing at the same jokes in two languages, and weaving a shared memory that defied rigid definitions of belonging.

Schools served as bridges between these worlds. Pupils learned Dante and Leopardi, but also local history and geography. Italian teachers often spoke Tigrino to clarify lessons, and Eritrean teachers occasionally sprinkled their lessons with Italian phrases. Chalk dust mingled with the aroma of Eritrean spices from vendors outside. Radios played Mussolini-era marches alongside local songs, creating an unpredictable, yet harmonious soundtrack to daily life. Students learned the value of duality: a verse from Petrarch could rhyme perfectly with a Tigrian proverb.

Festivals became celebrations of hybridity. Christmas arrived with panettone and carols, Easter with solemn processions, but also Saint George celebrations with local dances and singing. Kitchens became laboratories of fusion: pasta flavored with berbere spices, polenta prepared with sorghum flour, sambuca served beside local honey. Language itself became hybrid, with children inventing words that merged Italian and Tigrino. A child might call a game of tag correre – bere, running barefoot across the piazza while chanting in two tongues at once. Every home, every street corner, every market stall was a testament to the creative adaptation of cultures.

Music was another bridge. Radios played a mix of Italian ballads and local tunes, and children learned both with equal fluency. At dusk, it was not uncommon to hear an accordion playing “O Sole Mio” while elders hummed Tigrian songs in counterpoint. In the evenings, cafés and homes resonated with piano lessons, street musicians, and laughter. Italians learned the rhythms of Eritrean life, its cadence, its pauses, its insistence on resilience and Eritreans learned the cadences of Italian melody, blending into something new, unexpected, and wholly alive.

Politics and Change: The Federation and Annexation

Yet this hybridity existed under the shadow of history. The federation with Ethiopia in 1952 brought new laws, bureaucracy, and unease. Roads were patrolled more heavily; citizenship became a question, not a certainty. Initially, life continued, but the political currents were growing dark. In 1962, Ethiopia unilaterally annexed Eritrea, declaring it a province of the empire. Suddenly, what had been home for generations became contested land. The Ethiopian government imposed its administration with strict control, attempting to erase Eritrean autonomy.

The annexation brought brutality. Military patrols replaced familiar neighborhood rhythms. Italian families still deeply tied to Eritrea found themselves outsiders in their own streets. Eritreans faced imprisonment, torture, and disappearances if suspected of nationalist sympathies. In Asmara, even quiet daily interactions were watched and monitored. Curfews constrained movement; gatherings of more than a few people could invite suspicion. Italian – Eritrean families walked a tightrope of caution, often relying on personal connections and old friendships to navigate a city now shadowed by fear.

Stories of brutality spread like whispers: neighbors taken in the night, villages burned for suspected resistance, children witnessing violence from a distance they could not understand. Even shops and businesses were inspected, and anyone who spoke too freely about Eritrean independence risked reprisal. The Italians of Eritrea learned to separate the warmth of their immediate communities from the cold weight of political oppression, living daily life under the eyes of an increasingly authoritarian state.

Life Under Surveillance

The 1960s and early 1970s were marked by a new tension. Italians continued to work in workshops, repair Fiat engines, and run cafés, but each day carried the uncertainty of potential raids. Football matches still drew crowds in the Cicero stadium, but the joy of play existed alongside the fear of military interference. Cinemas screened Italian films, but even entertainment was tempered by whispered warnings of political surveillance.

In the homes, families held quiet discussions, debating whether to stay or leave, weighing memories of decades against the reality of violence. Parents explained to their children, in soft tones, the meaning of authority, the danger of questions, and the necessity of silence. The city’s elegance remained, but it was a fragile beauty, threatened by the shadows of occupation. Even simple pleasures shopping for spices, gathering for coffee under jacaranda trees were tempered by vigilance.

Exile and Memory

By 1975, the end had quietly arrived. Families closed their doors, leaving behind workshops, shops, gardens, and memories. They departed with light suitcases and heavy hearts, knowing they would never again see the land that had nurtured them. Eritrea, however, never truly left them. It lived on in stories, yellowed photographs, tastes, Tigrian words, and dreams leading to a bright plateau where anything seemed possible.

For the children and grandchildren of that generation, memory became a bridge between worlds. They grew up in Italy, the Americas, and Australia, carrying a place they had never fully seen with them, shaping their identity through stories, foods, and language. A simple meal of pasta with berbere sauce could transport them to a sunlit courtyard in Asmara. A Tigrian lullaby sung by a parent could summon the scent of highland winds. Photographs of the city whitewashed villas with their red tile roofs, tree-lined avenues, markets teeming with life became touchstones of identity, proof that a home had existed beyond borders and politics.

Some families kept diaries, meticulously noting festivals, street markets, and the unusual combinations of spices and music. Others preserved recipes, passing down dishes that married two worlds. Memory became both a sanctuary and a tool a way to live in two worlds at once, to honor the past without surrendering to it.

Diaspora Reflections
The Italians of Eritrea exemplify a broader truth of diaspora: identity is not static. It is lived, reshaped, hybrid. It carries both the homeland left behind and the new world embraced. Italians of the diaspora are not merely extensions of Italy, they are creators of new Italies, born in dialogue with distant lands, languages, and peoples.

Their story challenges conventional notions of national history. Italy, often imagined as bounded by its peninsula, must also be understood as a living, traveling, transforming entity. Culture, identity, and belonging are not tied solely to borders they are carried in memory, language, and daily life, wherever one may go. A Tigrian lullaby sung to a newborn in Sydney, a pasta dish seasoned with berbere in Milan, a street game remembered in Buenos Aires, these are small acts of cultural continuity, proof that identity travels, mutates, and survives.

Conclusion

This is their epic: a story of roots and beginnings, of suspended identities, of daily courage. It deserves to be told not as a minor colonial footnote, but as a vast human novel spanning generations and continents. The Italians of Eritrea remind us that history is not only made in capitals and on battlefields; it is made in classrooms, courtyards, markets, and kitchens. It is made in laughter, in work, in love.

To the Italians of the diaspora: your story is not nostalgia. It is justice. It is memory. It is proof that a people truly exist when their story is heard. And in hearing it, we understand Italy not as a static place, but as a living, traveling, and transforming idea a patchwork of worlds, cultures, and hearts.