This was formally launched last Thursday and is now open to public.
On Thursday, government officials and the diplomatic corps toured the expansive site before attending a banquet.
The site also includes a sculpture garden with installations representing Ethiopia’s nine regions, and a zoo is expected to open by the end of the year.
Aklilu Fikresilassie, an Ethiopian employee of the United Nations who attended the launch Thursday, said he was “really fascinated” to set foot inside a place that had been closed to the public his entire life.
“For us it’s like a government house, so now when you enter that palace it tells you that we are getting somehow closer to our leaders,” he said.
Backed by the United Arab Emirates, the project cost more than $160 million, Ethiopian officials told reporters at a briefing earlier this week.
Built in the late 1800s by Emperor Menelik II, who founded Addis Ababa, the palace was the residence of Ethiopia’s rulers for more than a century.
Abiy himself does not live there, and it has seen little activity in recent years. Abiy’s advisers say he has taken a keen interest in transforming the palace into a tourist attraction since coming to power in April 2018 — visiting the site every day in recent weeks to monitor progress.
The restored rooms feature items like Menelik’s sword and a life-size wax replica of former Emperor Haile Selassie, who lived at the palace and was then detained there after the Derg overthrew him in 1974.
The government’s “Home-Grown Economic Reform” agenda, unveiled last month, describes tourism as a primary engine of potential job creation.
