3 Best Sights in Haifa and the Northern Coast, Israel

Part of a coastal nature reserve, Dor Beach, also known as Tantura Beach, is a dreamy stretch of beige sand. Rocky islets form breakwaters and jetties provide calm seas for happy bathers. Amenities are ample: chair and umbrella rentals, a first-aid station, a restaurant, and changing rooms. The beach, beside Kibbutz Nahsholim, gets crowded on summer weekends and holidays. Amenities: food and drink; lifeguards; parking; showers; toilets. Best for: partiers; swimming; walking.

Atlit, a peninsula with the jagged remains of an important Crusader castle, also holds a more recent historical site: to the west (about 1,500 feet from the highway) is the Atlit detention camp used by the British to house refugees smuggled in during and after World War II. The reconstructed barracks, fences, and watchtowers stand as reminders of how Jewish immigration was outlawed under the British Mandate after the publication of the infamous White Paper in 1939. More than a third of the 120,000 illegal immigrants to Palestine passed through the camp from 1934 to 1948. In 1945, Yizthak Rabin, then a young officer in the Palmach, planned a raid that freed 200 detainees. The authenticity of the exhibit is striking: it was re-created from accounts of actual detainees and their contemporaries; you see the living quarters, complete with laundry hanging from the rafters. The camp is 15 km (9 miles) south of Haifa.

This very worthwhile museum next to Kibbutz Nahsholim holds a rich collection of finds from nautical digs and excavations at nearby Tel Dor. It's in the partly restored former glass factory opened by Baron Edmond de Rothschild in 1891 to serve the wineries of Zichron Ya'akov. The sequence of peoples who settled, conquered, or passed through Dor—from the Canaanites to the Phoenicians to Napoléon and his forces—can be traced through these artifacts. Of particular interest is the bronze cannon that Napoléon's vanquished troops dumped into the sea during their retreat from Akko to Egypt in May 1799. An informative film in English illuminates the history of the ancient port city of Dor.