Last checked August 10, 2026
Unity Park occupies part of the Grand Palace compound — Emperor Menelik II and Empress Taitu’s former residence, and still an active government palace complex today. Its opening to the public in 2019 was the first time ordinary visitors and tourists had been allowed inside at all.
What’s inside
- Menelik Palace, restored as a museum — room-by-room exhibits covering 19th- and 20th-century Ethiopia and several of its past emperors.
- A sculpture garden representing Ethiopia’s regional states, alongside dozens of indigenous plant species.
- A zoo with lions (including Ethiopia’s endemic black-maned lion), giraffes, zebras, primates, and other species.
Budget at least half a day if you want to see the palace museum and the zoo properly rather than rushing either.
Part of something bigger
Unity Park predates it, but since December 2022 the city has been running a much larger “corridor development” project: repaving and widening major roads with landscaped medians, dedicated cycle lanes, and wide pedestrian paths, and building new civic landmarks along them. By 2025 the project had delivered more than 96km of new pedestrian paths and 100km of cycle lanes across several redeveloped corridors, with more opening since.
Two other landmarks from the same push are worth knowing the names of:
- Sheger Park, also referred to as Friendship Square — a new public square near Meskel Square with an artificial lake and fountain, built as part of the same beautification effort.
- The Adwa Victory Memorial Museum — opened to commemorate the 1896 Battle of Adwa, Ethiopia’s decisive victory over an invading Italian force.
This is a genuinely fast-moving, still-expanding project rather than a fixed list — treat the names above as a starting point to confirm locally rather than an exhaustive or permanent list, since new corridors and landmarks keep opening.
Practical
Unity Park charges a separate entrance fee for foreign visitors, higher than most other sights in the city — check current pricing locally rather than relying on an old figure. Bags are searched at the gate, as it’s still part of an active palace complex.