Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv doesn't have the aura that antiquity and sanctity have bestowed on Israel's other famous cities. But for visitors and residents who fall in love with Tel Aviv, that's precisely where its charm lies.

The founders, who broke new ground—literally and figuratively—would not have known the phrase "cutting edge," but they would certainly have recognized the concept. These founders are being paid special honor in 2009, as the city celebrates its 100th anniversary with a number of special events and the opening or reopening of historic sites that connect past, present, and future in new and interesting ways for visitors and locals alike.

Granted, in the city's name, the founders tipped their European hats to the ancients who left behind millennia-old remains at Jaffa in the south and Tel Qasileh in the north: they called it "Tel Aviv," which is a poetic rendering of "old-new" and comes from the Hebrew translation of the work by Zionist visionary Theodore Herzl's "Altneuland". But they gave the city its edgy-urban vibe that it enjoys to this day.

The first impression Tel Aviv makes depends on the direction from which visitors enter. Glass office towers along the Ayalon Freeway, the city's ring road, showcase the latest trends in high-rise architecture. A dose of Israeli urban sprawl circa 1960 awaits those who come in via the neighborhoods northeast of Old Jaffa along Kibbutz Galuyot Street, eventually easing into the area's Bauhaus and Art Deco masterpieces, the pride of Center City. Whatever the route, one thing is clear: Tel Aviv is the heart of Israeli commerce and culture, and its restaurants, art galleries, museums, and beaches are unmatched anywhere in the country.

The city's beginning as a string of separate neighborhoods helps to explain its eclectic appearance, with towering skyscrapers casting shadows over some of the restored masterpieces of the 1920s and '30s. Tel Aviv poet Natan Alterman dubbed it "the White city," and it is still the world's only city dominated by the International Style of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe—an aesthetic of functional forms, flat roofs, and whitewashed exteriors that became known as Bauhaus. By the 1950s, many of these buildings were crumbling and cracked, or were demolished. Thankfully, city bylaws now mandate their preservation, and Tel Aviv's cluster of Bauhaus buildings, the largest in the world, has won it a place on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Tel Aviv has come a long way in its short life. Today, many homes in the early neighborhoods and the White City have reemerged from their renovations as gentrified residences, museums, restaurants, and boutique hotels. The charming Neveh Tzedek—a neighborhood that had long been forgotten as the city spread north and west—has recently been reborn as the city's cultural center thanks to the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater, with its surrounding area a wonderful place to wander among galleries, boutiques, and eateries. The working-class neighborhood of Florentine comes alive after dark with its pubs and dance clubs that are favorites with the young crowd. It's hard to imagine that just 90 years ago, this teeming metropolis was nothing but sand.

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