Tourism Attractions in Dire Dawa

 

Dire Dawa has a rich wealth of pre-historic cave paintings some of which have achieved international recognition through the efforts of the French and American Geologists that have studied them several times in the last 75 years, while there are still other caves that have never been studied so far.
The remains of the British airmen and African soldiers who, during the Second World War, fought besides the Ethiopian forces to liberate Ethiopia from Italian occupation.
The railway line that reached Dire Dawa in 1902 is believed to have been the reason the city came into being in the first place. That is why the railway station is one of the destinations of tourists and other visitors coming to the city.

 
Kefire  
 
is a traditional market place where one can see the colorful presentation of all people of the region in their cultural dresses. The presence of camels, donkeys, and the inevitable Gharris, two wheeled carts drown by a horse or a mule, gives it an aura of going back to medieval times.

This is one of largest mosques found in the city. It is called   masgidguma Mosque.
St. Michel’s Catholic Church was built over 115 years ago, and is located 26 kilometers from the city near a place called Beyo Awale. During the month of October Catholic believers from Dire Dawa, Harar, and other place annually gather at the church in there thousands.
And the Harari people and Muslims from the Dire Dawa region, Addis Ababa and other place during Islamic calendar shawal month annually gather. In holly city of harar.atending sint abadir religious fest.
Laga-Oda
 

Laga-oda is located about 35 km to the southwest of Dire Dawa. Laga-oda is a cave shelter that has remarkably kept the rock paintings numbering over 600 intact for thousands and thousands of years. The paintings in this prehistoric cave shelter consist of pictures of domestic animals, human figures, symbols, and wild animals. Like Porc Epic, this cave shelter has also yielded a number of prehistoric artifacts and faunal remains that belonged to the Later Stone Age.  

Scholars like Cervicek 1971, Clark 1984, and Brandt 1986, date the paintings at both these sites to around 5000bp, but there are others who date them even much earlier. On the other hand, the analysis of the various artifacts discovered by excavations from these two sites date them to be from 77000bp to around 15000bp. This indicates that the Dire Dawa environ had been inhabited since the Middle Stone Age.
Goda- Ajewa  
 

This is also a prehistoric cave art site located about 28 km to the southeast of Dire Dawa. Paintings of domestic animals and human figures in black, white and red colors are found in this cave.
Enkuftu Cave

 
 

This is a surface cave found at a place called Addis Ketema within Dire Dawa itself. It is a cave about which little is known apart from the fact that one of its walls feels cold, while its opposite one feels very hot when touched. All the same, people, who have lived in the area all their lives, say that there are colorful paintings deep in this cave, and that there are tunnels that go very far. All this will have to be substantiated by archeologists in the years to come.