Guardian Weekly

Dismay in Addis Ababa as ‘the soul of the city’ is razed

In the heart of Addis Ababa, the historic, ramshackle district of Piassa once teemed with shops and cafes. People would come from across Ethiopia’s capital city to buy anything from jeans to jewellery.

Today it lies in ruins. Its distinctive stone houses, with their wooden balconies and slanting metal roofs, are almost all gone. In their place are jagged fields of rubble, picked over by workers with sledgehammers.

People stop to stare at the wreckage.

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