The capital of Eritrea, a country with a repressive government that many of its citizens have fled as refugees, has been designated a World Heritage site by Unesco, the United Nations cultural organization.

The capital, Asmara, is sometimes called “Africa’s Miami” because of its many Art Deco buildings. The city flourished when Eritrea was an Italian colony, from 1889 until World War II, and it became a paradise for Italian architects, who could try out their boldest ideas there, away from Europe’s conservative cultural norms. In the 1930s, nearly half of Asmara’s residents were Italian, earning the capital another nickname, “Little Rome.”

In announcing its decision on Saturday, Unesco called the city “an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context.”

The Eritrean government lobbied extensively for Asmara to join the World Heritage List, which recognizes sites that have cultural, historical or social significance.