5 Best Sights in Tel Aviv, Israel

Half a century ago, this magnificent tree-lined boulevard was one of the most exclusive streets in the city. Today it's once again what visionaries at the beginning of the 20th century meant it to be—a place for people to meet, stroll, and relax. Along the street are some of the city's best restaurants and bars, and many Bauhaus gems are on or just off the street.

This area has been more successful than many other Tel Aviv neighborhoods in maintaining its older buildings. Bialik has long been a popular address with many of the city's artists and literati, so it's not surprising that some of the houses have been converted into small museums, including Beit Ha'ir, Beit Bialik, the Rubin Museum, and the Bauhaus Foundation Museum.

This popular thoroughfare off Allenby Street has plenty of cafés and restaurants where you can watch passersby. This is where young people shop for the latest fashions: the sizes are tiny, the favored color is black, and some of the boutiques are so minuscule you'll think you walked straight into the dressing room.

Wander down this alley to see old Tel Aviv decorative architecture at its best. Two plaster obelisks at the entrance mark the city's first "gated" community. Note the stucco lion in front of Number 7, which used to have glowing eyes fitted with lightbulbs. The original apartment house is painted pale yellow with garish orange trim. An outspoken builder named Meir Getzel Shapira bought Simtat Plonit in the 1920s and insisted that this pint-size street be named after him. Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, argued that another street already had that name. The mayor emerged victorious and named it Simtat Plonit, meaning "John Doe Street."

Think of Yefet as a sort of thread between eras: beneath it is the old market area, while all around you stand schools and churches of the 19th and 20th centuries. Several deserve mention. At No. 21 is the Tabitha School, established by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1863. Behind the school is a small cemetery where some fairly prominent figures are buried, including Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, the first to define Hodgkin's disease. No. 23 was once a French Catholic school, and it still carries the sign "Collège des Frères." At No. 25, the fortresslike Urim School was set up as a girls' school in 1882.