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Monumental discoveries

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In Addis Ababa, the 21st century arrived in 2007, according to the Ethiopian calendar, but you wouldn't know it. This is not at all a bad thing, though. Instead of traffic jams, you get the open road. Instead of vehicular roar, you get birdsong. Instead of malls, you get monuments.

A strung-out medley of late-20th-century edifices dispersed among pastures and woods where goats and sheep munch, Ethiopia's capital has a rustic languor. Because of its laconic, low-density style, the monuments stand out a lot more than they would in other state capitals, and each tells a story.

Amid the non-action, Unity Square is an epicentre of sorts, where there's a certain sophisticated buzz. Not a square at all but a crossing of boulevards, it's dominated by the National Theatre. A modernist block with multicoloured banding around the sides, the theatre is an icon of the freedom days of the 1960s, when Africa was feeling good about itself. Released from colonialism, the continent was about to burst onto the world stage with a new and boundless energy, primed to succeed.

Beside the theatre sprawls an open-air cafe, canopied by a huge acacia tree, where patrons sip excellent local coffee at leisure. Standing high above the scene is a rough-hewn statue of a herdsman in a noble pose, seeming to say - in a country where pastoralists abound - 'I am the soul of Ethiopia'. Beside the boulevard is a huge modernist statue of a long-necked lion sporting a cascading mane of rectangular plates, as if armoured. A crown on its head, it is the Lion of Judah, symbol of the nation.

The once imperial capital of a very old country, Addis Ababa - meaning 'new flower' - was founded in the late 19th century on the high plateau that forms the heartland of Ethiopia. Here His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I - King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God and Power of the Trinity - ruled in archaic splendour for almost half a century, until he was deposed in 1974 by a brutal Marxist dictatorship. Exit the Lion of Judah, enter the Hyena of the Horn.

Mengistu Haile Mariam, the leader of the Derg revolution, ruled for 17 years and left his brutish mark on Addis Ababa. The granite Derg Monument on Churchill Avenue, the city's main drag, projects typical communist triumphalism in its huge sculpted tableaux, depicting the people steadfastly marching towards an inevitable utopia, led by the wise and wonderful dictator. You have to admire the bas-relief artistry, though, particularly the finely carved starving women, all of it fashioned by North Korean sculptors in an outpouring of comradeship.

The Derg may have left a heavy bootprint but Haile Selassie ruled three times longer than them, and represented a millennial tradition. Visitors can get some sense of his Ruritanian reign - brilliantly captured by Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book The Emperor - by trekking out to Addis Ababa University, the main building of which served as the living deity's palace. In Genete Le'ul, the Princely Garden Palace, the powder blue bathroom is state-of-the-art circa 1930s and the bed conjures up the French Second Empire. The emperor's pet lions used to roam these gardens.

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