Things to Do on an Addis Ababa Layover

Eleven places, and between them they account for almost every stop on almost every departure out of Bole. Here is what each one actually is, how long the itineraries give it, and what you will remember about it a week later.

Lucy, at the National Museum of Ethiopia

She is 3.2 million years old, about 40 per cent of a skeleton, and she was dug out of the Afar Triangle at Hadar on 24 November 1974 by a team under Donald Johanson. Ethiopians call her Dinkʼinesh, which means you are marvellous. What sits in the case downstairs is a cast; the original bones are held in the museum's archive, which surprises almost everybody who comes for her.

Above the basement there are three more floors — ancient and medieval objects with the regalia of former rulers, then art, then ethnography. Most itineraries give the whole building an hour, which is enough for Lucy and one floor. The museum was founded in 1958 and it closes on Mondays.

Mount Entoto, 800 metres above the city

Menelik II camped on this ridge and built his palace here before there was a city below it. The summit is at 3,200 metres, the road up climbs through eucalyptus that was imported from Australia in his reign and planted mostly under Haile Selassie, and the whole ridge is nicknamed the lung of Addis Ababa.

You come for the view, which on a clear morning runs the length of the plain. The churches of Entoto Maryam, Saint Raguel and Saint Mary stand on the ridge, and the Ethiopian Space Science Society keeps an observatory on the summit. Itineraries give it between one and two hours, and the weather decides what you get — the month-by-month figures say which months put it inside a cloud.

Mercato, and why a guide changes it

The largest open-air market in Africa, covering several square miles, with an estimated 13,000 people working across 7,100 businesses. Coffee is the main trade moving through it. It exists in its present place because the Italian occupation moved the old market west and reserved the original site, renamed Piazza, for Europeans.

It is a working marketplace rather than a visitor attraction, and that is exactly why every operator who takes you in sends a guide with you. Travellers consistently describe it as the stop that a guide transforms, and the hour they remember. Bring small notes, keep your bag in front of you, and it closes on Sundays.

Holy Trinity Cathedral and the tombs

Established on 22 December 1931 under Haile Selassie, halted by the Italian invasion, and completed in 1942 to commemorate the victory over the occupation. In Amharic it is Kidist Selassie, and it carries the title Menbere Tsebaot. It is square rather than circular, unusually for an Ethiopian church, with a threefold plan modelled on Solomon's Temple.

The complex holds monuments to the Ethiopians massacred by the Italians in 1937 and the tomb of the imperial officials executed under the Derg. One product includes it in the fare; another charges about ten dollars at the door. Say which you want when you book.

St George's Cathedral, octagonal and burnt twice

Designed and built by the Italian engineer Sebastiano Castagna in 1911, on the ruins of a fifteenth-century church, and named for the Tabot carried to the Battle of Adwa. Empress Zewditu was crowned here in 1917 and Haile Selassie in 1930, which is why it became a place of pilgrimage for Rastafarians.

The Italian Fascist authorities set it on fire in 1937; Haile Selassie restored it after the liberation of 1941. Its museum holds an imperial throne and stained glass by Afewerk Tekle, and the weaponry from the wars against Italy — curved swords, tridents, helmets made from lion manes.

The Ethnological Museum, inside the emperor's own palace

The museum of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, founded in 1963 at Addis Ababa University's Sidist Kilo campus. The building is the Gennete Le'ul, the Princely Paradise palace, built in 1934 as Haile Selassie's principal residence. During the occupation, Rodolfo Graziani made it his home and his headquarters.

The first director of the institute was Richard Pankhurst, son of the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. The collection runs through the life cycle of Ethiopia's peoples, under painted coffered ceilings that are worth as much attention as the cases beneath them. Allow an hour; several itineraries treat it as the alternative when a Monday closes the National Museum.

Yekatit 12, and the obelisk at Sidist Kilo

On 19 February 1937 two men attempted to assassinate Graziani. In the three days that followed, Italian forces killed Ethiopians in numbers still disputed — estimates range from 1,400 to 30,000, and a 2017 study puts it at about 19,200, roughly a fifth of the population of the city.

The Yekatit 12 monument marks it: a white stone obelisk 28 metres tall in the middle of Sidist Kilo Square, inaugurated by Haile Selassie on 2 November 1944, with bronze reliefs added from 1955 by the Yugoslav sculptors Antun Augustinčić and Frano Kršinić. Three itineraries pass it. It ties the palace, the cathedral and the square into one story, and almost nobody explains it.

The Ethiopian coffee ceremony, three cups deep

Green beans are roasted in a pan over a flame in front of you, ground by hand in a mukecha, and brewed in a clay jebena before being poured from a height into small handleless cups. Grass is strewn on the floor. Decline the coffee and you will be offered tea instead.

The grounds are brewed three times, and each round has a name: abol, tona and baraka, the last meaning to be blessed. Allow an hour. Almost every itinerary out of Bole builds one in, and across every operator it is the stop travellers write about afterwards.

Tomoca, and coffee to take home

Family-owned, established in February 1953, and named from the Italian Torrefazione Moderna Café. There are 22 branches across the city, and the first international one opened in Tokyo in 2015. The dark roast is the default and the macchiato is what people order.

Two itineraries stop here specifically, and it is the sensible place to buy beans to carry home — a kilo of Ethiopian arabica takes up less bag than anything else you will be tempted by.

Meskel Square and the Lion of Judah

Meskel Square is the city's parade ground and the place its festivals happen; most itineraries give it ten minutes, which is the right amount unless something is happening in it. The Lion of Judah stands nearby in bronze — a crowned lion carrying a cross-topped staff, the emblem of the imperial line.

Both are pass-bys on most routes rather than stops, and that is the honest framing. They photograph well from the car window and neither needs a ticket.

Bata Mariam and the smaller churches

One itinerary gives Bata Mariam a full two hours, which is longer than any other single stop on any departure here. It is a historic Ethiopian Orthodox church known for its circular plan and its murals, and two hours in it is a genuinely different day from a two-hour drive-past of six landmarks.

It suits a traveller who would rather see one thing properly than five things briefly. If that is you, the shape you want is on private Addis Ababa Layover tours.

How long each stop actually takes

These are the times the itineraries themselves give, which is what makes them worth comparing: a stop given two hours on one departure and forty minutes on another is a different experience of the same place.