UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Israel

UNESCO's Description

Acre is a historic walled port-city with continuous settlement from the Phoenician period. The present city is characteristic of a fortified town dating from the Ottoman 18th and 19th centuries, with typical urban components such as the citadel, mosques, khans and baths. The remains of the Crusader town, dating from 1104 to 1291, lie almost intact, both above and below today's street level, providing an exceptional picture of the layout and structures of the capital of the medieval Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

Acre lies at the northern end of a wide bay with Mount Carmel at the south. It is the best natural roadstead on the southern Phoenician coast and has easy access to the Valley of Jezreel. It was settled early and has always been important for the fleets of kingdoms and empires contesting the area, serving as the main port for the entire southern Levant up to the modern era.

The ancient town was located atop Tel ʿAkkō (Hebrew) or Tell al-Fuḫḫār (Arabic, Tel el-Foukhar, meaning "tell of the clay/sherds"), 1.5 km (0.93 mi) east of the present city and 800 m (2,600 ft) north of the Na'aman River. In antiquity, however, it formed an easily protected peninsula directly beside the former mouth of the Na'aman or Belus.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q126084 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

Masada is a rugged natural fortress, of majestic beauty, in the Judaean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. It is a symbol of the ancient kingdom of Israel, its violent destruction and the last stand of Jewish patriots in the face of the Roman army, in 73 A.D. It was built as a palace complex, in the classic style of the early Roman Empire, by Herod the Great, King of Judaea, (reigned 37 – 4 B.C.). The camps, fortifications and attack ramp that encircle the monument constitute the most complete Roman siege works surviving to the present day.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

Geography

The cliff of Masada is, geologically speaking, a horst. As the plateau abruptly ends in cliffs steeply falling about 400 m (1,300 ft) to the east and about 90 m (300 ft) to the west, the natural approaches to the fortress are very difficult to navigate. The top of the mesa-like plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about 550 m (1,800 ft) by 270 m (890 ft). Herod built a 4 m (13 ft) high casemate wall around the plateau totaling 1,300 m (4,300 ft) in length, reinforced by many towers. The fortress contained storehouses, barracks, an armory, a palace, and a series of cisterns (capacity around 40,000 m3; 1.4 million cu ft) that were refilled by rainwater – with the runoff collected from a single day's rain allegedly able to sustain over 1,000 people for 2 to 3 years.

History

Almost all historical information about Masada comes from the first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus. Masada is also mentioned in the Judean Desert Documents.

Josephus writes that the site was first fortified by Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BC. However, so far no Hasmonean-period building remains could be identified during archaeological excavations.

Josephus further writes that Herod the Great captured it in the power struggle that followed the death of his father Antipater in 43 BC. It survived the siege of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II Mattathias, who ruled with Parthian support.

Modern tourism

In 2007, the Masada Museum in Memory of Yigael Yadin opened at the site, in which archeological findings are displayed in a theatrical setting. Many of the artifacts exhibited were unearthed by Yadin and his archaeological team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during the 1960s.

The Snake Trail leaves from the eastern side at the Masada Museum (access via the Dead Sea Highway) and gains around 301 m (988 ft) in elevation.

The Roman Ramp trail is also very steep, but has less elevation gain, and is accessed from the western side of the mountain (with access by car from the Arad road).

Hikers frequently start an hour before sunrise, when the park opens, to avoid the mid-day heat, which can exceed 43 °C (109 °F) in the summer.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q186312 (CC0).

Visiting Masada

Masada (Hebrew: מצדה) is a magnificently located fortress site in Israel's stark Judaean Desert, close to the Dead Sea. The last Jewish holdout to fall to Rome in 73 CE, Masada symbolizes the exile of the Jewish nation from the Holy Land. Its violent end has become a symbol of bravery and self-sacrifice since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Travel notes adapted from Wikivoyage: Masada (CC BY-SA 4.0).

UNESCO's Description

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 and developed as a metropolitan city under the British Mandate in Palestine. The White City was constructed from the early 1930s until the 1950s, based on the urban plan by Sir Patrick Geddes, reflecting modern organic planning principles. The buildings were designed by architects who were trained in Europe where they practised their profession before immigrating. They created an outstanding architectural ensemble of the Modern Movement in a new cultural context.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

Adaptation to local climate

The architecture had to be adapted to suit the extremes of the Mediterranean and desert climate. White and light colors reflected the heat. Walls not only provided privacy but protected against the sun. Large areas of glass that let in the light, a key element of the Bauhaus style in Europe, were replaced with small recessed windows that limited the heat and glare. Long, narrow balconies, each shaded by the balcony above it, allowed residents to catch the breeze blowing in from the sea to the west. Pitched roofs were replaced with flat ones, providing a common area where residents could socialize in the cool of the evening.

Buildings were raised on pillars (pilotis), the first being the 1933 Engel House designed by Zeev Rechter.

History

The concept for a new garden city, to be called Tel Aviv, was developed on the sand dunes outside Jaffa in 1909. Scottish urban planner Patrick Geddes, who had previously worked on town-planning in New Delhi, was commissioned by Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, to draw up a master plan for the new city. Geddes began work in 1925 on the plan, which was accepted in 1929. The view of the British Mandatory authorities seemed to have been supportive. In addition to Geddes, and Dizengoff, the city engineer Ya'acov Ben-Sira contributed significantly to the development and planning during his 1929 to 1951 tenure.

Patrick Geddes laid out the streets and decided on block size and utilisation. Geddes did not prescribe an architectural style for the buildings in the new city.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q159070 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

Situated on the western slopes of the Mount Carmel range, the site includes the caves of Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad and Skhul. Ninety years of archaeological research have revealed a cultural sequence of unparalleled duration, providing an archive of early human life in south-west Asia. This 54 ha property contains cultural deposits representing at least 500,000 years of human evolution demonstrating the unique existence of both Neanderthals andEarly Anatomically Modern Humans within the same Middle Palaeolithic cultural framework, the Mousterian. Evidence from numerous Natufian burials and early stone architecture represents the transition from a hunter-gathering lifestyle to agriculture and animal husbandry. As a result, the caves have become a key site of the chrono-stratigraphic framework for human evolution in general, and the prehistory of the Levant in particular.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q1443478 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

The archaeological site contains some 3,500 underground chambers distributed among distinct complexes carved in the thick and homogenous soft chalk of Lower Judea under the former towns of Maresha and Bet Guvrin. Situated on the crossroads of trade routes to Mesopotamia and Egypt, the site bears witness to the region’s tapestry of cultures and their evolution over more than 2,000 years from the 8 th century BCE—when Maresha, the older of the two towns was built—to the time of the Crusaders. These quarried caves served as cisterns, oil presses, baths, columbaria (dovecotes), stables, places of religious worship, hideaways and, on the outskirts of the towns, burial areas. Some of the larger chambers feature vaulted arches and supporting pillars.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

Historical overview

The national park includes the remains of two historical towns: Maresha, located in the south, and Beit Guvrin, located in the north. It is located 13 kilometers from Kiryat Gat.

Tel Maresha (Modern Hebrew) or Tell Sandahannah (Arabic) is the site of Iron Age (biblical) Mareshah, which continued through the Persian and into the Hellenistic period. The earliest written record of Mareshah was as a city in ancient Judah (Joshua 15:44). The city of mu-ukh-ra-ash-ti, sometimes rendered in English as Muhrashti, of the Amarna Letters (14th century BCE, during the Early Bronze Age) is unlikely to be the predecessor of Iron Age Maresha, as no remains older than the Iron Age were unearthed there by archaeologists.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q2407530 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

Consisting of a series of catacombs, the necropolis developed from the 2 nd century AD as the primary Jewish burial place outside Jerusalem following the failure of the second Jewish revolt against Roman rule. Located southeast of the city of Haifa, these catacombs are a treasury of artworks and inscriptions in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew and Palmyrene. Bet She’arim bears unique testimony to ancient Judaism under the leadership of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, who is credited with Jewish renewal after 135 AD.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History of the settlement

The national park is managed by the National Parks Authority. It borders the town of Kiryat Tiv'on on the northeast and is located five kilometres west of the moshav named after the historical location in 1926, a decade prior to its archaeological identification. In early modern times the site was the Arab village of Sheikh Bureik; it was depopulated in the 1920s as a result of the Sursock Purchases, and identified as Beit She'arim in 1936 by historical geographer Samuel Klein.

Pottery shards discovered at the site indicate that a first settlement there dates back to the Iron Age.

Beit She'arayim was founded at the end of the 1st century BCE, during the reign of King Herod.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q830805 (CC0).