If Tel Aviv is the young, modern city, Jaffa is its ancient soul. This port, thousands of years old and now part of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality, is one of the oldest cities in the world: its docks have been welcoming ships for at least four thousand years, and its name appears in the Bible and in Greek mythology. Getting lost in its old town —a maze of cobbled lanes, golden stone houses, Ottoman arches and bougainvillea— with the Mediterranean as a backdrop and the Tel Aviv skyline outlined across the bay is one of the most beautiful walks in all of Israel.
Jaffa has the charm of port cities with many layers of history: Canaanite, Egyptian, Philistine, Israelite, Greek, Roman, Crusader, Arab and Ottoman. According to the Bible, the prophet Jonah set sail from here before being swallowed by the great fish; according to the Greeks, Perseus rescued Andromeda here, chained to a rock; and for centuries pilgrims bound for Jerusalem came ashore here. In the 19th century, its famous Jaffa oranges, thick-skinned and sweet, were exported to much of Europe and made the port world-famous.
Today, after careful restoration, old Jaffa is an artists' quarter full of galleries, workshops, trendy restaurants and boutique hotels, while keeping its mixed Jewish and Arab character and its everyday life around the flea market and the fishing port. This guide helps you explore it with purpose: what to see in the old town, where the best viewpoint is, how the flea market works, where to eat the best hummus and how to combine your visit with Tel Aviv. A journey from the present to the past in just a few steps.
Jaffa is one of the oldest continuously inhabited port cities in the world, with more than four thousand years of history. It is mentioned in ancient Egyptian documents and in the Bible —the prophet Jonah set sail from its port—, and Greek mythology links it to Perseus's rescue of Andromeda. Over the centuries it passed through the hands of Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans, always as the sea gateway to Jerusalem. In 1799, Napoleon took it by storm during his Eastern campaign. In the 19th century it flourished thanks to the export of the famous Jaffa oranges and grew beyond its walls; from that growth emerged, in 1909, the Jewish neighbourhood that would become Tel Aviv. After the 1948 war, most of its Arab population left or was displaced, and in 1950 Jaffa was administratively merged with Tel Aviv. Today, restored, it is a historic and artistic neighbourhood with a mixed population. Its long history, from the prophet Jonah to today's artists, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Mediterranean plain where the first modern Hebrew city was born, next to the ancient port of Jaffa and the Roman ruins of Caesarea: the country's modern face built on layers of Antiquity.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before Tel Aviv, before almost everything, there was Jaffa. This natural harbour on the Mediterranean is one of the oldest in the world: archaeologists have found traces of settlement more than four thousand years old, and its name already appears in ancient Egyptian documents from the second millennium BCE. Perched on a rocky hill by the sea, at a spot with hardly any other natural harbours along the whole coast, Jaffa was for millennia the great sea gateway to this land, the way in for goods, armies and pilgrims.
Its age wrapped it in myths and sacred stories. Greek mythology set one of its most famous episodes here: the princess Andromeda, chained to a rock off the coast as an offering to a sea monster, and rescued by the hero Perseus. Even today, some rocks off the port are known as 'Andromeda's Rock'. The Hebrew Bible also places well-known scenes in Jaffa (Yafo): the prophet Jonah sailed from its port to flee the mission God had given him, before being swallowed by the great fish; and, according to the account, the cedars of Lebanon that King Solomon imported to build the Temple in Jerusalem arrived here.
For Christians, Jaffa also holds a key episode: in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Peter raises the disciple Tabitha from the dead here and has a vision that leads him to open Christianity to non-Jews. Myth, Bible and history intertwine on this headland, which has quite literally watched millennia of civilisation go by.
Because of its strategic value, Jaffa was coveted and conquered again and again throughout Antiquity. It was a Canaanite town and then came under the rule of the Egyptian pharaohs, who used it as a military base; a famous Egyptian legend tells how a general took it by hiding soldiers in baskets, a story reminiscent of the Trojan Horse. It later passed through the hands of Philistines and Israelites, and under King Solomon it served as Jerusalem's port.
Over the centuries, Jaffa fell to the great empires that fought over the eastern Mediterranean: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and then the Greeks after the conquests of Alexander the Great. In Roman times it was a busy port and the scene of episodes in the great Jewish revolt against Rome in the 1st century. After the fall of Rome, it came under the Byzantine Empire and, from the 7th century, under Arab Muslim rule, which kept it going as a trading port.
The Middle Ages turned it into a Crusades battlefield. The Crusaders took it at the end of the 11th century and made it a key port of their kingdom, the entry point for pilgrims and supplies heading to Jerusalem; Sultan Saladin and, later, other Muslim armies won it back. Through all these swings, the city was captured, razed and rebuilt time and again. In the 13th century, to stop it serving as a bridgehead for new crusades, the Mamluks destroyed its fortifications, and the port fell into decline for centuries.
Under the long rule of the Ottoman Empire, from the 16th century onwards, Jaffa was slowly reborn as a port and walled town. The 18th and early 19th centuries saw it grow again, though not without violence: in 1799, during his Eastern campaign, Napoleon Bonaparte besieged Jaffa and took it by storm, an episode remembered for the massacre of prisoners and for a plague epidemic that ravaged his own troops, a scene later immortalised by Romantic painting.
Throughout the 19th century, Jaffa became a prosperous, cosmopolitan port city, the main gateway to the Holy Land. Thousands of Christian pilgrims bound for Jerusalem came ashore at its docks, as did the first waves of Jewish immigrants. The city spilled beyond its walls and filled up with new neighbourhoods, European consulates, churches and missions. It was a time of mixing: Muslims, Christians of many rites and Jews lived side by side in a bustling port.
And it was then that Jaffa gave the world its most famous product: the Jaffa orange, a thick-skinned variety that is easy to peel, almost seedless and very sweet, ideal for shipping by sea. Grown in the irrigated orchards around the city, the Jaffa orange was exported across much of Europe and made the city a byword for quality citrus, a brand that lives on to this day. For decades, Jaffa's orange groves were one of the region's economic engines.
At the start of the 20th century, Jaffa was a dense, overcrowded city, and its growing Jewish community was looking for space and better living conditions. In 1909, a group of Jewish families founded a new garden suburb on the dunes north of Jaffa, which the following year took the name Tel Aviv. So the oldest city was, quite literally, the mother of the newest: Tel Aviv was born as a suburb of Jaffa and, over time, outgrew it completely in size and importance.
During the decades of the British Mandate, Jaffa remained a mostly Arab city, an important Palestinian commercial, cultural and political centre, with newspapers, cinemas and an intense urban life, while Jewish Tel Aviv grew up beside it. Relations between the two communities grew tenser in step with the wider conflict over Palestine, with outbreaks of violence in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
The 1948 war, which came with the birth of the State of Israel, was a turning point for Jaffa. During the conflict, the vast majority of its Arab population —tens of thousands of people— left the city or were displaced, an episode that forms part of the Palestinian exodus known as the Nakba. Jaffa was left almost empty and was then repopulated, largely by Jewish immigrants. In 1950, the Israeli government merged Jaffa administratively with Tel Aviv to form the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo. The old port metropolis became a historic neighbourhood of the young city it had itself given birth to.
From the 1960s onwards, Jaffa's old town, run down after the war, was the subject of an ambitious restoration plan that rehabilitated its stone alleyways, Ottoman houses and arches, and turned it into an artists' quarter, with galleries, workshops, restaurants and boutique hotels. The result is one of the most charming historic quarters in the country, much visited and photographed, with the Tel Aviv skyline as a backdrop.
Today Jaffa is a mixed city, home to both an Arab community (Muslim and Christian) descended from those who stayed in 1948 and a Jewish population. You can feel that mix in its markets, its mosques and churches, its food —Jaffa's famous hummus and Arab pastries— and its everyday life. It is not free of social tensions, typical of a mixed city in a country in conflict and also under strong property pressures that are making the neighbourhood more expensive; but it keeps a character of its own, different from that of modern Tel Aviv.
For travellers, Jaffa offers a fascinating contrast: in just a few steps you go from the skyscrapers and beaches of a 21st-century tech metropolis to an ancient port of cobbled alleyways echoing with four thousand years of history. The flea market full of antique dealers and bars, the fishing harbour, St. Peter's Church overlooking the sea and the viewpoint at sunset sum up that dialogue between the ancient and the new that makes Jaffa a one-of-a-kind place.
