The back story
Sleeping in history: Tel Aviv’s heritage hotels
The city’s first hotel of 1913, a 1925 silver dome, a tailor’s house of 1919 and Bauhaus halls.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © Artem.G · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia CommonsSome of Tel Aviv’s most interesting hotels are its old buildings. Elkonin brings back the city’s first hotel, created in 1913 by Malka and Menahem Elkonin; Nordoy, built in 1925, keeps its silver dome and pink façade on Nahalat Binyamin; and Sam & Blondi lives in a house built in 1919 on Sheinkin Street for a tailor.
Add the Bauhaus buildings of Hotel Reception and Bazaar, The Drisco of 1866 and Jaffa’s old police station, and the city’s history can be slept in.
Neve Tzedek and the colony
Elkonin, on Lilienblum Street, revives the first hotel in Tel Aviv, created in 1913 by Malka and Menahem Elkonin; today it belongs to Accor’s MGallery collection, with a rooftop pool and a Spa by Clarins. A short walk south, The Drisco occupies the hotel the brothers John and George Drisco built for the American families who arrived in 1866.
Nahalat Binyamin and Sheinkin
Nordoy, at 27 Nahalat Binyamin, was built in 1925 and is known by its silver dome, rounded balconies and pink façade, all restored; it is for adults only. On Sheinkin Street, Sam & Blondi occupies a building of 1919, built for Aryeh Brill, a tailor from Ukraine who lived on its ground floor; its tiled roof and front balcony are intact. Bachar House, further down Nahalat Binyamin, is a heritage-preserved building too.
Bauhaus stays
Hotel Reception, on Dizengoff Square, fills a Bauhaus building of 1938 by Yosef Neufeld, and Bazaar, in Jaffa, a Mandate-era Bauhaus hall that once held a sales fair. On the promenade, Herods pays its own homage to the White City, with vintage photographs and 1930s décor along its corridors.
Choose the building first, then the room: here the history is the luxury.
Jaffa
On Clock Square, The Setai fills the Ottoman buildings that housed the Jaffa police until 2005, and The Jaffa a 19th-century neo-Renaissance building restored by John Pawson, its chapel once part of a convent of the Sisters of St Joseph.
Our advice
Our advice: in old buildings no two rooms are alike. Ask the hotel which room you will have, whether it faces the street or a courtyard, and whether the lift runs on Shabbat if that matters to you.
Why it's on our list
- Neve Tzedek and the colony
- Nahalat Binyamin and Sheinkin
- Bauhaus stays
- Jaffa
- Our advice
Location
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More in depth
The back storyThe hotels of Tel Aviv, from Jaffa’s old walls to the promenadeAn old police station on Clock Square, John Pawson in Jaffa, an 1866 colony house and the promenade.
The back storyTel Aviv-Yafo: the old port and the white cityAn ancient port on its hill, a city founded on the dunes in 1909, a UNESCO Bauhaus city, the beach.
The back storyTel Aviv’s museums, stages and the Bauhaus cityThe art museum, Reuven Rubin’s house, Nahum Gutman, the opera, Batsheva and the White City.