Beersheba is the capital of the desert: the great city of the Negev, where modern Israel —university, high tech, new neighbourhoods— meets thousands of years of history and the Bedouin culture of the desert. For many travellers it's a stopover on the way to Eilat or the Ramon Crater, but it stands on its own: biblical tradition links it to the patriarch Abraham, and its name, 'the well of the oath', recalls the pacts that, according to the story, were sealed here beside a water well.
The city brings together a varied mix of attractions: an early 20th-century Ottoman old town with streets laid out in a grid, the bustling Thursday Bedouin market, the Abraham's Well visitor centre and, on the outskirts, the archaeological site of Tel Be'er Sheva, a World Heritage Site, with its ingenious biblical-era water system. Add to that its role as a base for discovering the Negev and its Bedouin heritage.
This guide helps you make the most of Beersheba: what to see in the city, when to come for the market, how to reach the archaeological sites and how to use it as a springboard into the desert. Beersheba also has a unique historical chapter —the 1917 battle, with the famous charge of the Australian cavalry— that ties it to the First World War. We cover it all with facts, context and respect for the different communities of the region.
Beersheba is one of the oldest and most evocative places in the Bible: its name, 'Beer Sheva' ('the well of the oath' or 'of the seven'), refers to the pacts that, according to the Book of Genesis, the patriarchs Abraham and Isaac sealed beside a water well on the edge of the desert. Archaeology documents very early settlements in the area, and nearby Tel Be'er Sheva preserves the remains of a planned Israelite city from the Iron Age, with a remarkable water system, now a World Heritage Site. After centuries as desert and Bedouin territory under various empires, modern Beersheba was founded by the Ottomans around 1900 as an administrative centre, with a regular street plan. In 1917, during the First World War, it was the scene of a famous battle in which the Australian cavalry made a decisive charge against the Ottoman defences. Under the State of Israel, it grew into the great capital of the Negev, with a university, industry and strong development. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The great desert of the south and the lowest point on Earth: the fortress of Masada, the oases of the Dead Sea, the Bedouin heritage of the Negev and the Red Sea at Eilat.
Read the history of South: Negev and the Dead Sea →They depart from Jerusalen, 72 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Few city names carry as much meaning as Beersheba. In Hebrew, 'Beer Sheva' means both 'the well of the oath' and 'the well of the seven', and according to the biblical texts that double reading is where its story begins. In the southern desert, where water means life or death, a well was a treasure worth making pacts over, swearing oaths for and even fighting about.
The Genesis account tells how the patriarch Abraham made a pact here with Abimelech, a local king, so that his rights over a well he had dug would be recognised. As a pledge of the agreement, Abraham gave him seven ewe lambs, and the place would have taken its name from that oath, or from those seven sheep. Later, according to the same tradition, his son Isaac renewed a similar pact on the same spot. Beersheba appears again and again as a meeting point of the patriarchs on the edge of the desert. It was also a symbolic southern border of the Land of Israel: the biblical phrase 'from Dan to Beersheba' meant the whole country, from north to south.
Whatever archaeology can or cannot confirm about the patriarchs, these stories show how very old the memory tied to this place is. In one way or another, Beersheba is sacred to the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which share Abraham as a common father. That biblical root is the first layer of a very long history.
Alongside the stories, archaeology offers hard evidence. A few kilometres from the modern city stands Tel Be'er Sheva, the mound where an Israelite Iron Age city existed between the 10th and 8th centuries BC. It was no makeshift village but a carefully planned settlement. Its streets, its square by the gate, its houses, storehouses and walls followed a coherent urban plan. That was rare at the time, and it points to a central authority capable of organising space.
The most impressive feature of that city is its water supply system, essential in the middle of the desert. The ancient inhabitants dug a large well by the gate and, above all, an impressive underground cistern cut into the rock, reached by stairs from inside the walls. Thanks to this feat of engineering, people could get water even when the city was under siege, without stepping outside its defences. You can still walk down through those passages today and see how ingenious their builders were.
The site also yielded a remarkable horned altar. It had been dismantled in antiquity and its blocks reused in other buildings, making it an important find for the study of ancient Israelite religion. As an exceptional example of biblical town planning, Tel Be'er Sheva was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the country's group of biblical 'tells' (archaeological mounds). It is tangible proof of an ancient Beersheba that goes well beyond legend.
After antiquity, urban Beersheba disappeared for centuries. The south, the vast Negev desert, remained an open territory, crossed and lived in by Bedouin tribes. These nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples moved with their herds in search of water and pasture, and they developed a culture deeply adapted to the desert, with its hospitality, knowledge of the land and tribal codes. Throughout that time there was no city here, only a landscape of wells, camps and caravan routes under the nominal rule of the various empires that governed the region.
Modern Beersheba was born in the early 20th century, by decision of the Ottoman Empire, which then controlled the region. Around 1900, the Ottomans chose to found an administrative centre here to manage the south and its Bedouin populations. They built a new town on a planned layout: a regular grid of straight streets crossing at right angles, which was modern for the place and the time. Government buildings, a mosque, a school and houses went up, and they make up today's 'Ottoman' quarter, or Old City.
That founding made Beersheba the point of contact between the Ottoman state and the Bedouin world of the Negev, and a market where the tribes came to trade. That is the origin of the Thursday Bedouin market, which is still held today. It marked the start of the desert's transformation into a city, a process that would speed up dramatically a few decades later.
In the middle of the First World War, Beersheba was suddenly thrust onto the world stage. In 1917, the forces of the British Empire, including troops from Australia and New Zealand, were advancing from Egypt against the Ottoman Empire, Germany's ally, in the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Taking Beersheba, whose wells were vital for keeping an army going in the desert, was the key to breaking the Ottoman defensive line and opening the way north.
On 31 October 1917, after a day of fighting, the battle was decided by an action that would become legendary. As evening fell, the horsemen of the Australian Light Horse charged at full gallop against the Ottoman trenches defending the town, holding bayonets because they had no sabres. The surprise and speed of the charge overwhelmed the defences, and the Australians took Beersheba and, crucially, stopped the wells from being destroyed. It is considered one of the last great successful cavalry charges in military history.
That episode opened the way for the British advance that, a few weeks later, would take Jerusalem and bring four centuries of Ottoman rule in the region to an end. The Battle of Beersheba is widely remembered in Australia and New Zealand. The city has a Commonwealth War Cemetery, a memorial park and monuments that make it a place of remembrance for visitors from those countries. It is a chapter that links the Negev desert to the great upheavals of the 20th century.
The end of Ottoman rule was followed by the British Mandate. Then, with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the war that came with it, Beersheba changed hands and came under Israeli control. From then on, the city went through a radical transformation. From a small town of a few thousand people, it grew rapidly as successive waves of Jewish immigrants arrived from all over the world, and it became the great city of the south, the capital of the Negev.
In a way, that growth embodied the dream expressed by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who chose to retire to a kibbutz in the Negev, with his idea of 'making the desert bloom'. Beersheba developed industry, services and, above all, higher education. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev became one of the city's driving forces, and in recent years a major high-tech and cybersecurity hub has been built up, giving the city a modern, innovative profile. Meanwhile, the Ottoman quarter has been revitalised with cafés, galleries and museums.
Beersheba is also a city where communities meet. Alongside a Jewish population of very diverse origins, the region is home to a large share of Israel's Bedouin population. Their relationship with the state, on issues such as the recognition of villages, land and services, is a complex and sometimes tense social and political question that is worth understanding with nuance. For travellers, Beersheba today offers a unique mix: biblical roots, an Ottoman and military past, a lively university and tech scene, and its role as the gateway to the immense Negev desert, with its spectacular nature and Bedouin culture. As everywhere in the south, it is a good idea to check the security situation before you travel. It is a city that sums up thousands of years of desert history in just a few layers.
