The Dead Sea is one of those places you have to see to believe. At the lowest point on dry land on the planet, more than 430 metres below sea level, a lake ten times saltier than the ocean lets you do something impossible anywhere else: float effortlessly, lying on your back, as if your body refused to sink. Add to that the mineral mud people smear all over their skin, the spas, and a breathtaking desert landscape of ochre cliffs and turquoise water.
Beyond the floating, the region is home to some of the most impressive sites in Israel: the fortress of Masada on its plateau, the Ein Gedi oasis and nature reserve, and the caves of Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known biblical manuscripts, turned up in the mid-20th century. All of it about an hour from Jerusalem.
This guide tells you how to enjoy the Dead Sea safely (there's a technique to it: the salty water is harsh and there are important rules), where to swim (Ein Bokek is the equipped, supervised area), how to make the most of the mud and the spas, and how to combine relaxing with the big sights nearby. We also explain, with figures, the lake's environmental crisis, as it shrinks year after year. It's a shared and sensitive region: we describe it accurately and without taking sides.
For thousands of years the Dead Sea has filled the bottom of the great Jordan Valley rift, and the area around it has been inhabited since prehistoric times. In antiquity, its shores and cliffs were a refuge and the setting for famous episodes: biblical tradition places the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah nearby; King Herod built a palace-fortress on top of Masada; and in the caves of Qumran, a Jewish community hid scrolls in the 1st century that would not be found until 1947. Its waters and minerals have been prized since ancient times (Cleopatra, according to legend, coveted its mud), and Greeks and Romans were already writing about this 'asphalt lake'. In modern times, the region was divided by shifting borders, and today its shores are split between Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. Since the 20th century, the lake has been shrinking rapidly because water from the Jordan River has been diverted and because of mineral extraction, a major environmental problem. All of that history, from the biblical world to today's ecological challenge, 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.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Nowhere on the planet's surface is there dry land lower than the shores of the Dead Sea: more than 430 metres below sea level, and still dropping. The lake lies at the bottom of a gigantic geological fracture, the Rift Valley fault, which runs from southern Turkey to East Africa and, along this stretch, forms the Jordan Valley. It is a landscape of extremes: bare cliffs, crystallised salt, scorching heat and water that shimmers turquoise between ochre mountains.
The Dead Sea is not a sea but a lake with no outlet to the ocean. The Jordan River and a few springs pour water into it, but the only way water leaves is by evaporation, under a relentless sun. That process, repeated over millennia, has concentrated salts and minerals to extremely high levels: a salinity of around 34%, roughly ten times that of the open sea. That is why almost nothing lives in its waters — hence the name — and why the human body floats in them effortlessly.
The same chemistry explains its other oddities: the black, mineral-rich mud, the high density of the water, and air laden with bromine and with higher oxygen pressure thanks to the low altitude. People in ancient times already marvelled at this 'asphalt lake', from which blocks of bitumen would sometimes surface. Greeks and Romans wrote about it, and its reputation as a strange, healing place goes back a very long way.
The area around the Dead Sea is one of the landscapes that appears most often in the Bible. Tradition places the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah here, destroyed according to the account in Genesis, and a nearby salt mountain even bears the name of 'Lot's wife', turned into a pillar of salt in the biblical story. Close by, at the oasis of Ein Gedi, the Bible has the future King David take refuge while fleeing King Saul.
In the centuries before the Common Era, the area was coveted for its strategic position and its resources: balsam, salt, bitumen. King Herod the Great, who ruled Judea under Roman patronage in the 1st century BC, built several fortified sites on the lake's shores, including the most famous of them: the complex of palaces and walls at Masada, perched on an impregnable plateau and designed as a refuge in times of danger.
Decades later, that fortress would become the setting for the final episode of the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome. According to the historian Flavius Josephus, in 73-74 AD a group of rebels held out there against the siege of a Roman legion until a tragic end. In those same decades, not far away, a Jewish community lived and wrote at Qumran, storing in caves the scrolls that would lie undisturbed for almost two thousand years. The Dead Sea desert thus preserves some of the most striking traces of the ancient world.
In 1947, some Bedouin shepherds looking for a lost goat in the cliffs of Qumran, on the north-western shore of the lake, entered a cave and found clay jars holding ancient scrolls of parchment and papyrus. Without knowing it, they had just made one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century: the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Over the following years, exploration of the caves in the area brought to light hundreds of manuscripts and tens of thousands of fragments, dated between the 3rd century BC and the 1st century AD. Among them are copies of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible — the oldest known, about a thousand years older than the manuscripts available until then — as well as religious texts, community rules and biblical commentaries. Their value for the study of the biblical text and of the Judaism of the period is immeasurable.
Most researchers link the scrolls to an ascetic Jewish community that is thought to have lived at Qumran — often identified with the Essenes described in ancient sources — although the question is still a matter of academic debate. It is believed they hid their texts in the caves to protect them from the Roman legions during the Great Revolt. Today, many of the scrolls are kept in Jerusalem, in the 'Shrine of the Book' pavilion of the Israel Museum, and they are still being studied decades after the discovery.
The Dead Sea's reputation as a place of health and beauty goes back thousands of years. In antiquity, the area's balsam and minerals were already being exploited, and legend — hard to verify — says that Queen Cleopatra coveted its muds and plants for her cosmetics. The minerals in the water and mud, the ultraviolet radiation softened by the low altitude and the distinctive air of the place gave rise, as early as Greco-Roman times, to the idea that these shores had healing properties.
In the 20th century, that tradition turned into a full-blown wellness industry. The Dead Sea became a recognised destination for treating skin conditions, especially psoriasis, as well as some respiratory and rheumatic ailments, thanks to its unique combination of sun, salt water, mineral mud and oxygen-rich air. Hotels with spas, clinics and health resorts sprang up, above all at Ein Bokek, in the south.
At the same time, an industry of cosmetics based on the lake's minerals — salts, muds, creams — flourished, and these products are sold all over the world. Around the lake, on both the Israeli and the Jordanian side, health and relaxation tourism became a key economic activity. For today's traveller, that legacy means you can combine the natural experience of floating and covering yourself in mud with modern spas and treatments, in a spectacular desert setting.
The great paradox of today's Dead Sea is that it really is dying, not just in name. Its level has been dropping by about a metre a year for decades, and since the mid-20th century it has lost a huge part of its surface area. The main cause is the massive diversion of water from the Jordan River — its main source — for drinking water and irrigation in Israel, Jordan and Syria, on top of natural evaporation and the industrial extraction of minerals in the evaporation ponds at the southern end.
The consequences are visible and sometimes dangerous. As the water retreats, it exposes layers of underground salt that dissolve on contact with fresh spring water and cause the ground to collapse: these are the sinkholes, thousands of holes that open up suddenly along the shore, especially on the Israeli side, and that have forced the closure of beaches — such as the historic one at Ein Gedi — roads and even tourist facilities. In many places the shoreline has receded by hundreds of metres.
The problem is a shared one: the lake's shores are divided between Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, so any solution requires cooperation in a region that is already complex and sensitive. Ambitious projects have been studied — such as bringing water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea — but none has solved the problem so far, and several have been questioned over their impact. The future of this unique place, the lowest on Earth, depends on decisions that go well beyond tourism. For the traveller, it is one more reason to visit with respect and an awareness of what is at stake.
