Ethiopia

Ethiopia contributes the origin of coffee and a court that stopped moving. The ceremony — beans roasted, ground and brewed in front of you, served in three rounds with incense — takes an hour and is a social obligation rather than a drink. Gondar's emperors ruled from mobile camps until Fasilides settled there in 1636 and built a stone castle, followed by five more, in an architecture borrowing from Portuguese, Indian and Axumite sources and resembling nothing else in Africa.