What is it?

Keren is Eritrea's second city, a dusty, easygoing highland town of around 90,000 people cradled in a bowl of jagged granite peaks and prickly-pear slopes. Its heartbeat is the market: on Monday mornings the camel and livestock market erupts on the edge of town in a cloud of dust, bellowing and bartering, while nearby the women's market spills over with baskets, spices, hand-hammered silver jewellery and mounds of dried chillies. Culturally it is Eritrea's crossroads — home to the Tigre and Bilen peoples, where Muslim call to prayer drifts over Italian colonial villas, an Ottoman-era Egyptian fort broods on a hilltop, and the Mariam Dearit shrine houses a small Madonna statue tucked inside the hollow trunk of an ancient baobab tree. The town is also hallowed ground for military historians: the ferocious 1941 Battle of Keren, one of WWII's toughest mountain campaigns, was fought in the surrounding cliffs, and immaculate Commonwealth and Italian war cemeteries lie beneath the ridgelines where thousands died. Add an abandoned Italian railway station, a cactus-fringed main street and locals sipping macchiatos in the shade, and Keren feels like a place that time consented to leave alone.

Where is it?

Keren sits in the Anseba region of northwestern Eritrea, about 90 km (roughly two to three hours by road) from the capital Asmara via a spectacular switchback descent through the escarpment. The best time to visit is the cooler, dry months from October to March; the town is noticeably hotter and lower than Asmara at around 1,390 m. Time your arrival for a Monday to catch the camel market at dawn, and consider the spectacular Mariam Dearit festival on 29 May, when thousands of pilgrims camp around the baobab.

What makes it worth it?

Very few travellers reach Keren, and that scarcity is precisely its gift — you are not one of a crowd, you are a curiosity, greeted with tea, handshakes and genuine warmth. Visitors describe the camel market as one of the most photogenic, unfiltered scenes in the Horn of Africa: no ticket booths, no performance, just centuries-old commerce carrying on exactly as it always has. Standing inside the hollow baobab at Mariam Dearit, where Italian soldiers left the Madonna during the war and where Christians and Muslims alike come to pray, is the kind of quietly astonishing moment that stays with people for decades. Walk the war cemeteries at dusk, look up at the impossible cliffs of Dongolaas Gorge, and the scale of what happened here lands with real force. Travellers routinely call Eritrea 'the last unspoiled corner of Africa', and Keren is the town that convinces them — you'll remember the dust, the silver bangles, the smell of coffee roasting and the feeling of having seen something almost nobody else has.

How accessible is it?

Physically Keren is easy — it's a flat, walkable town, and everything of interest can be covered on foot or with a short taxi ride. The real challenge is bureaucratic: all foreigners must obtain a travel permit from the Ministry of Tourism in Asmara to leave the capital, which typically takes a day and costs only a few dollars, but is non-negotiable and occasionally refused. Eritrean visas must be arranged in advance through an embassy or a licensed tour operator and can take weeks; independent travel is possible but slow. Getting there costs little — local buses from Asmara run for a couple of dollars, while a hired car with driver runs roughly US$80–150 per day; simple hotels in Keren cost around US$20–50 a night. Bring plenty of cash in the local nakfa, as ATMs and card payments are essentially non-existent, and always ask before photographing people, markets or anything remotely official. Budget two days: one to explore, and one Monday morning for the market.