Tel Aviv-Yafo: Old Jaffa and the Modern City

Tel Aviv-Yafo combines two distinct but interconnected urban histories. Jaffa is an ancient Mediterranean port whose documented history extends across approximately four millennia. Tel Aviv began in 1909 as Ahuzat Bayit, a new neighborhood established on sand dunes north of Jaffa and later renamed Tel Aviv.

The 1948 war brought fighting and substantial civilian displacement in and around Jaffa. In April 1950, Jaffa was formally merged with Tel Aviv, creating the unified municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo. The photographs taken in 2008 document this layered city through Old Jaffa’s stone lanes, zodiac-marked plaques, waterfront, street commerce, historic residential façades, and views toward Tel Aviv’s modern skyline.

Tel Aviv’s twentieth-century growth produced a contrasting urban landscape. Its White City developed primarily from the early 1930s through the 1950s, following principles established in Patrick Geddes’s urban plan and incorporating architecture associated with the Modern Movement. UNESCO inscribed the White City on the World Heritage List in 2003 for its significant adaptation of modern architecture and urban planning to local cultural and climatic conditions.