Asella

Asella is the historic capital of the Arsi Zone in Ethiopia's Oromia Region, about 156 km south of Addis Ababa, at a high elevation of roughly 2,430 m. The town's cool, thin highland air is credited as one of the reasons the surrounding Arsi Zone has produced a remarkable number of Ethiopia's greatest long-distance runners, including Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele, Tirunesh Dibaba and Derartu Tulu. Asella predates the Second Italo-Ethiopian War; Italian occupiers intended to develop it into a provincial capital but completed only a handful of masonry buildings before Ethiopian liberation. A Swedish mission founded a hospital and school here in 1946, later replaced by a government hospital in 1966. Asella served as the capital of the former Arsi Province until Ethiopia's 1995 constitution demoted it to a zone of Oromia, and Arsi University was established in the town in 2015.

By road, about 156 km south of Addis Ababa in the Arsi Zone.

Walkable town center.

• Arsi University campus — established in 2015.
• The high-altitude training grounds that have shaped generations of Ethiopian distance-running champions.

Local produce from the surrounding Arsi Zone farming region.

• Addis Ababa — the national capital, to the north.