Explore Israel

Jerusalem

The holiest city in the world for Judaism and among the most sacred for Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem's Old City packs the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Dome of the Rock into barely two square kilometres of ancient stone lanes. The view across the golden dome from the Mount of Olives at dawn remains one of the most powerful sights on earth, and the city's archaeological layers — from the City of David to the Crusader Quarter — are inexhaustible.

Tel Aviv

Israel's vibrant, secular Mediterranean capital is a city of white Bauhaus architecture, golden beaches, and a restaurant and nightlife scene that has made it one of the most talked-about urban destinations in the Middle East. The UNESCO-listed White City — the largest collection of Bauhaus buildings in the world — sits shoulder to shoulder with rooftop bars, world-class hummus joints, and a start-up economy that has transformed this city into the 'Silicon Valley of the Mediterranean'.

Eilat

At the southern tip of Israel on the Red Sea, Eilat offers some of the most accessible coral reef diving in the world — snorkellers can reach live coral from the beach at the Coral Beach Nature Reserve, and the warm, calm waters make it an exceptional winter sun destination when the rest of the country is cool and rainy. The city's resort strip faces Jordan's Aqaba across the narrow gulf, giving it a frontier quality that adds to its appeal.

Haifa

Israel's third-largest city is built on the slopes of Mount Carmel above a deep-water port, and its defining feature is the Bahá'í World Centre — a cascade of nineteen meticulously groomed terraced gardens flanking the gold-domed Shrine of the Báb, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Wadi Nisnas neighbourhood's street art, the German Colony's cafés, and the Carmel Market give the city a relaxed, cosmopolitan character distinct from either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

Mitzpe Ramon

Perched on the rim of the Makhtesh Ramon — a geological erosion crater 40 km long and 2 km deep, the largest on earth — this small desert town is the gateway to Israel's most dramatic landscape. Sunrise over the Negev crater turns the sandstone and granite pink and gold, and the surrounding reserve offers hiking, jeep tours, and stargazing at one of the country's darkest-sky sites.

Nazareth

The largest Arab city in Israel and the hometown of Jesus of Nazareth, Nazareth draws Christian pilgrims from around the world to the Basilica of the Annunciation — the largest church in the Middle East — and the narrow lanes of the Old City where the souq still sells spices, olive-wood carvings, and Arab sweets. The city's restaurant scene has emerged as one of Israel's most exciting, driven by chefs reclaiming traditional Arab and Levantine ingredients.

Dead Sea

The lowest point on Earth at 430 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea is so dense with salt and minerals that floating is inevitable and swimming impossible — the mud-smeared float is among the most photographed travel experiences in the region. The Israeli shore at Ein Bokek has developed into a full resort strip, and the nearby Qumran caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 are a short drive north.

Acre (Akko)

A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001, Acre's remarkably intact Crusader-era citadel lies almost entirely underground beneath the Ottoman town that was built on top — the vast Knights' Halls and Crusader tunnels are among the finest preserved medieval fortifications in the Middle East. The old harbour, the Al-Jazzar Mosque, and a vibrant covered market make the walled city feel lived-in and genuine in a way that larger tourist sites rarely manage.

Caesarea

Herod the Great's showpiece Roman port city, built in the 1st century BC, is one of the best-preserved Roman archaeological sites in the Middle East — the amphitheatre, hippodrome, and harbour ruins are dramatic even by Mediterranean standards, and the amphitheatre still hosts concerts against a backdrop of the sea. The adjacent Caesarea Maritima national park is easily combined with a visit to the lively marina restaurants developed in the modern town around the ancient walls.

Tiberias

On the western shore of the Sea of Galilee — Israel's freshwater lake and the lowest freshwater body on earth — Tiberias serves as the base for visiting the New Testament sites of the surrounding region: Capernaum, the Mount of Beatitudes, and the site of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. The lake itself is beautiful and, outside pilgrimage seasons, surprisingly peaceful for swimming, kayaking, and boat trips.

Jaffa

One of the world's oldest port cities, now absorbed into southern Tel Aviv, Jaffa's ancient harbour walls, hilltop flea market, and maze of gallery-lined lanes give Tel Aviv its historical counterweight. The Hassan Bek Mosque, the Armenian quarter, and a string of excellent restaurants in converted old buildings make Jaffa worth an afternoon separate from the beach scene to its north.

Masada

Herod's desert fortress on a sheer mesa above the Dead Sea, where 960 Jewish Zealots chose death over Roman slavery in 73 CE, has become one of Israel's most powerful symbols and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cable car reaches the summit easily, but the traditional Masada Snake Path ascent before dawn — arriving to watch the sun rise over Jordan and the Dead Sea — is one of Israel's defining travel experiences.

Safed (Tzfat)

High in the Galilean hills above Tiberias, Safed is one of Judaism's four holy cities and the historical centre of Kabbalah — the city's compact Artists' Quarter, with its stone alleyways, galleries, and medieval synagogues, has a mystical atmosphere that draws artists, students of spirituality, and visitors seeking something quieter than Jerusalem. The views over the Galilee and the quality of the light that attracted painters for centuries are immediately apparent.

Beit She'an

The best-preserved Roman city in Israel, Beit She'an's excavated downtown — a colonnaded main street, bathhouses, a 7,000-seat theatre, and mosaiced public buildings — gives a vivid impression of urban life in a prosperous Roman provincial city. Located where the Jordan and Jezreel valleys meet, its strategic position explains why it was continuously inhabited for over 6,000 years, with occupation layers stretching from Canaanite times to the Byzantine era.

Rosh HaNikra

At Israel's northernmost point on the Lebanese border, white chalk cliffs plunge into the Mediterranean above a series of sea grottos carved by centuries of wave action — accessible by the world's steepest cable car (a 60-metre drop to the water). The brilliant turquoise water surging through the caves and the dramatic clifftop views south along the Israeli coast make it one of the country's most photogenic natural sites.

Zichron Ya'akov

Founded in 1882 by Romanian Jewish immigrants, Zichron Ya'akov's stone-paved main street, lined with wine bars, boutiques, and old Ottoman-era buildings, has the feel of a Provençal village transplanted to the Carmel ridge above the Mediterranean. The Carmel wine region it sits at the heart of is one of Israel's oldest and most respected, and the Aaronsohn House museum tells the extraordinary story of the WWI spy ring that operated from this quiet town.

Be'er Sheva

The capital of the Negev and Israel's fourth-largest city sits at the crossroads of the desert and serves as the gateway for exploring the Negev highlands, including the Makhtesh Ramon crater. Abraham's Well, the Old City market, and the UNESCO-listed Tel Beer-sheba archaeological site (part of the Biblical Tels inscription) are within the city limits, while the Thursday Bedouin market on the outskirts is one of the largest in the Middle East.

Netanya

Israel's premier Mediterranean beach resort sits on a bluff above a long sandy shoreline, with a pleasant pedestrian promenade, outdoor restaurants, and the kind of relaxed beach culture that makes it popular with both Israeli families and international visitors seeking a lower-key alternative to Tel Aviv. The clifftop promenade at sunset, overlooking the beach backed by white towers, is a genuinely pleasant evening.

Inscribed in 2001, Masada is Herod the Great's fortified palace complex built atop an isolated mesa above the Dead Sea between 37 and 31 BCE — a site that became the last stronghold of Jewish Zealots against Rome in 73 CE, when its 960 defenders famously chose collective death over surrender. The dramatic setting, the extraordinary preservation of Herod's palaces, bathhouses, and storerooms, and the weight of historical memory make it the single most charged archaeological site in Israel.

An Ottoman walled city built above a largely intact underground Crusader city that served as the last major Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land, Acre's layered history — Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Arab, Crusader, and Ottoman — is physically readable in its fabric. Inscribed in 2001, the site's Knights' Halls, Crusader tunnels, Al-Jazzar Mosque, and fortified sea walls create one of the most compelling historical townscapes in the Middle East.

Inscribed in 2003, Tel Aviv's White City is the world's largest concentration of Bauhaus-influenced International Style architecture — over 4,000 buildings constructed in the 1930s and 1940s by European Jewish architects who brought the modernist ideas of the Bauhaus school from Germany. The flat roofs, horizontal bands of windows, and white facades, combined with Mediterranean adaptations like pilotis and shaded balconies, created a genuinely distinctive architectural expression.

Three of the most strategically important cities in ancient Canaan and Israel, these excavated tels (mound cities) preserve superimposed layers of Canaanite, Israelite, and later occupation stretching back 5,000 years. Inscribed in 2005, Megiddo — the 'Armageddon' of the Book of Revelation — alone has 26 occupation layers; Hazor was the largest city in ancient Canaan; and Beer Sheba is a textbook example of an Iron Age planned Israelite city.

Four Nabataean cities — Haluza, Mamshit, Avdat, and Shivta — along with related sections of the ancient incense trade route inscribed in 2005, preserve the extraordinary achievement of a desert trading civilisation that channelled frankincense and myrrh from Arabia to the Mediterranean between the 3rd century BCE and 2nd century CE. The elaborate water collection systems, urban planning, and agricultural terraces these Nabataean traders built in an arid landscape remain astonishing two millennia later.

Inscribed in 2008, this site encompasses the two most sacred places of the Bahá'í Faith — the Shrine of the Báb in Haifa, with its nineteen terraced gardens cascading down Mount Carmel, and the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh near Acre. The immaculate gardens and the gold-domed shrine create one of the most visually striking pilgrimage sites in the world, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually regardless of their faith.

A group of four caves on the western slopes of Mount Carmel, inscribed in 2012, that contain a near-continuous stratigraphic sequence of human habitation spanning 500,000 years — the most complete archaeological record of the biological and cultural evolution of modern humans in any single location. The caves document key transitions in human prehistory including the emergence of anatomically modern humans and the earliest evidence of symbolic burial practices in the region.

Inscribed in 2014, this site in the Judean foothills preserves an extraordinary subterranean landscape of some 3,500 cave systems carved from soft chalk over 2,000 years — Hellenistic, Idumean, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Crusader communities all quarried the stone, then used the caverns for burial, water storage, olive pressing, and columbaria. Visitors can explore dozens of the caves at the Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park in a surreal underground world.

Inscribed in 2015, this cemetery in the lower Galilee served as the principal Jewish burial site after the Bar Kokhba revolt forced Jews from Jerusalem in the 2nd century CE, and became the resting place of Rabbi Judah HaNasi, the compiler of the Mishnah. The extensive catacombs, carved with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek inscriptions and decorated with menorahs, Jewish symbols, and figurative art, document the cultural vitality of post-Temple Judaism at a moment of profound historical crisis.