Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv, officially called Tel Aviv-Yafo (or Tel Aviv-Jaffa), is the largest city in Israel’s Gush Dan metropolitan area. Sitting on the Mediterranean coast, it serves as the country’s economic and technological engine and is recognized as a major global high-tech hub. Its population ranking depends on the status of East Jerusalem: if that area is counted as part of Israel, Tel Aviv comes second after Jerusalem; otherwise, it is the most populous city, ahead of West Jerusalem.

The city is run by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality under Mayor Ron Huldai and hosts most of Israel’s foreign embassies. Classified as a beta+ world city, it placed 53rd in the 2022 Global Financial Centres Index. Tel Aviv has the third- or fourth-largest economy in the Middle East and the highest per capita economy in the region. It ranks fourth globally as a startup ecosystem hub, yet it also holds the world’s highest cost of living.

The city attracts over 2.5 million international visitors each year and is home to Tel Aviv University, the country’s largest university with more than 30,000 students.

Founded in 1909 by Jewish residents (the Yishuv), the settlement was first called Ahuzat Bayit, meaning “House Estate” or “Homestead,” named after the Jewish association that built it as a modern housing estate on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa, then part of the Ottoman Empire’s Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem. A year later, the name changed to Tel Aviv, taken from the biblical name Tel Abib (“Tell of Spring”), which Nahum Sokolow used as the title for his Hebrew translation of Theodor Herzl’s 1902 novel Altneuland (“Old New Land”).

Earlier Jewish suburbs of Jaffa, such as Neve Tzedek, had already been established. Under Meir Dizengoff’s leadership, Tel Aviv grew quickly. It gained township status within the Jaffa Municipality in 1921 and became fully independent from Jaffa in 1934. Accelerating Jewish immigration, especially from Nazi Germany, caused Tel Aviv’s population to soon surpass that of Jaffa, which at the time had an Arab majority.

In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence was proclaimed in Tel Aviv, and government functions operated there until moving to Jerusalem in the following years. After the 1947–1949 Palestine war, Tel Aviv began annexing parts of Jaffa, fully reunifying with it under the name Tel Aviv in April 1950, then renaming to Tel Aviv-Yafo in August 1950.

The city’s White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, contains the world’s largest collection of International Style buildings, including Bauhaus and other modernist designs. Popular attractions include Old Jaffa, the Eretz Israel Museum, the Museum of Art, Yarkon Park, and the city’s promenade and beaches.

The name Tel Aviv comes from the Hebrew title of Herzl’s novel Altneuland, as translated by Sokolow. Sokolow borrowed the name from a Mesopotamian site near Babylon mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel: “Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel Aviv, that lived by the river Chebar…” Chosen in 1910 from several suggestions (including “Herzliya”), the name was seen as fitting because it evoked renewal in the ancient Jewish homeland: “aviv” (or “abib”) means “spring,” symbolizing rebirth, while “tell” (or “tel”) refers to an artificial mound built up over centuries by successive civilizations, representing antiquity.

Though founded in 1909 as a small settlement on sand dunes north of Jaffa, Tel Aviv was envisioned from the start as a future city. Its founders wanted it to be clean and modern, inspired by European cities like Warsaw and Odesa, in contrast to what they saw as the squalid conditions of neighboring Arab towns.

Jaffa, the only urban center in modern Tel Aviv-Yafo that existed in early modern times, was a key port for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows human settlement there as early as 7,500 BC, with the city established by around 1,800 BC. Its natural harbor has been used since the Bronze Age. By the time Tel Aviv was founded under Ottoman rule, Jaffa had been ruled by Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Phoenicians, Ptolemies, Seleucids, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, early Islamic caliphates, Crusaders, Ayyubids, and Mamluks before the Ottomans took over in 1515.

It appears in ancient Egyptian documents and the Hebrew Bible. Other ancient sites in Tel Aviv include Tell Qasile, Tel Gerisa, Abattoir Hill, Tel Hashash, and Tell Qudadi. During the First Aliyah in the 1880s, as Jewish immigration increased, new Jewish neighborhoods were founded outside Jaffa on what is now Tel Aviv territory. The first was Neve Tzedek, established in 1887 by Mizrahi Jews due to overcrowding in Jaffa, on land owned by Aharon Chelouche. Others followed: Neve Shalom (1890), Yafa Nof (1896), and Achva.