About the neighborhood
Addis Ababa's historic commercial heart
Piassa is Addis Ababa's oldest commercial district and the most visible legacy of Italy's brief, brutal occupation of Ethiopia (1936–1941). The Italians built the area as a planned commercial centre, and many of its art deco façades, arcaded shopfronts and narrow grid streets survive — making Piassa one of the few neighborhoods in sub-Saharan Africa with a recognisably European urban texture. Holy Trinity Cathedral and the National Museum (where the famous Lucy hominid fossils are kept) are nearby. Today Piassa is loud, crowded, traffic-clogged and absolutely alive: street vendors, gold shops, century-old Italian cafés still serving macchiatos and cornetti, the city's biggest jewellery market on Churchill Avenue, and the kind of street life Addis is known for. The neighborhood is currently undergoing controversial government redevelopment, which makes visiting it now — before more of the original architecture disappears — newly urgent.
Encyclopedic content adapted from the Wikipedia article on Piassa, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
