Israel is a fascinating country to visit, and if you would like to learn more about the country and history, you should include some museums in your itinerary.
There are hundreds of museums located throughout the country in popular tourist destinations like Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. But which ones are recommended to visit?
View our guide to the top rated museums to add to your Israel itinerary.
1. Bible Lands Museum – Jerusalem
• Address: Shmuel Stephan Weiz St 21, Jerusalem, 9104601
The Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem has a enique collection depicting the cultures and civilizations of the ancient lands of the Bible. The museum’s extensive collection of Ancient Near Eastern art presents the history of the biblical period.
Daily guided tours and an Easyguide audio guiding system are free with admission.
Bible Lands is open daily with a gift shop and kosher restaurant. Saturday Night Music Wine and Cheese programs and Wednesday evening lectures. Check online for latest options.
2. The Israel Museum – Jerusalem
• Address: Derech Ruppin 11, Jerusalem
The Israel museum is the largest and most important cultural institution in the country. The museum includes some 500,000 archeological and anthropological exhibits, displays of Judaica and ethnography, Israeli and international art. It also houses unique finds, such as the scrolls – the oldest Biblical manuscripts in the world – relics from the time of Bar Kochva and the largest collection of Judaica in the world.
The museum features various facets of Jewish history and international art in several separate buildings, a sculpture garden and the Shrine of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are found. It has specific departments of archaeology, Jewish life, Jewish ceremonial art, Primitive and Israeli art, Old masters and Impressionists, modern art, design, ancient glass period rooms, and a children’s museum! The Billy Rose Sculpture Garden includes works by Henry Moore and Picasso.
The huge permanent collection is documented with temporary world – class exhibits each month.
3. Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center – Or Yehuda
• Sderot Mordehai Ben Porat 83, Or Yehuda
The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center is both a Research Institute and a Museum, with an impressive collection of ethnographic material, judaica, archival documents, books and manuscripts. The BJHC publishes research work and journals, organizes exhibitions and holds cultural events and conferences. We have strong ties with Jews of Iraqi origin both in Israel and in the Diaspora, and are in the process of compiling an extensive genealogical database of families originating in Iraq.
4. Chagall Windows – Jerusalem
• Address: Hadassah University Hospital Jerusalem District, 9112102
The Synagogue of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center was dedicated on February 6th, 1962, as part of our Hospital’s Golden Anniversary celebration.
The floors and interior walls are made of Jerusalem Stone, and the Synagogue is illuminated by a hanging lantern and by sunlight which streams through the magnificent Chagall Windows.
The creation of the Windows was a labor of love to Chagall and his assistant, Charles Marq, both of whom worked on the project for two years. Marq developed a special process of veneering pigment on glass which allowed Chagall to use as many as three colors on a single uninterrupted pane, rather than being confined to the traditional technique of separating each color pane by lean strips.
5. Rockefeller Archaeological Museum – Jerusalem
• Address: Sultan Suleiman St 27 Jerusalem
The Rockefeller Archaeological Museum is one of the largest and most impressive archeological museums in Israel, ituated in a magnificent white limestone edifice in East Jerusalem, houses the extraordinary collection of antiquities unearthed in excavations conducted in the country mainly during the time of the British Mandate (1919-1948). The Museum was opened in 1938.
6. The Tower of David Museum – Jerusalem
• Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem, 9114001
Set in the magnificently restored ancient Citadel’ first constructed 2,000 years ago by Herod the Great, the Tower of David Museum traces Jerusalem long and eventful history through state-of-the-art displays and exhibits’ utilizing the most advanced technologies.
Canaanites and Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, Crusaders, Muslims, Turks, British, and Israelis are richly presented and seek harmony within the age-old walls. The panoramic route along the Citadel towers with its most breathtaking views of the city and the lush archaelogical gardens, all add to an experience you will cherish.
7. Yad Vashem – Jerusalem
• Address: Jerusalem, 9103401
The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority – The Jerusalem memorial to the Six Million who perished in the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem’s task is to perpetuate the legacy of the Holocaust to future generations so that the world never forgets the horrors and cruelty of the Holocaust. Its principal missions are commemoration and documentation of the events of the Holocaust, collection, examination, and publication of testimonies to the Holocaust, the collection and memorialization of the names of Holocaust victims, and research and education.
The Archive collection, the largest and most comprehensive repository of material on the Holocaust in the world, comprises 58 million pages of documents and nearly 100,000 still photographs, along with thousands of films and videotaped testimonies of survivors. These may be accessed by the public and read and viewed in the appropriate rooms
8. Ben-Gurion Museum – Tel Aviv
• Address: Sderot Ben Gurion 17, Tel Aviv-Yafo
David Ben Gurion is a famous political leader of Israel, its first Prime Minister. In the museum you’ll have a chance to look into his private and public life. A lot of books, pictures, all the items that belonged to Paula and David Ben Gurion are in the house. Short film show.
Ben-Gurion left the house and all of its contents to the State of Israel, specifying it be used for educational and research purposes.
9. ANU Museum of the Jewish People – Tel Aviv
Address: Klausner St 15, Tel Aviv-Yafo, 6139202
ANU Museum of the Jewish People (formerly Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora) conveys the story of the Jewish people from the time of their expulsion from the Land of Israel 2,500 years ago to the present. It relates the unique story of the continuity of the Jewish people through exhibition, education and cultural endeavors, providing multiple avenues of personal historical identification.
The idea of establishing ANU was originally proposed in the late 50’s by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the founder and then President of the World Jewish Congress.The idea was to create a monument to the Jewish Diaspora, past and present.
When the Museum opened in May 1978, Beth Hatefutsoth was regarded by many Museum experts as one of the most innovative Museums in the world. It created a whole new concept of museum and has influenced Museum culture since.
Today Beth Hatefutsoth has evolved into far more than a Museum: it impacts and touches the lives of Jews not just in Israel but throughout the world. It is truly, in every sense of the word, a Museum of the Jewish people.
10. Eretz Israel Museum – Tel Aviv
• Address: Chaim Levanon St 2, Tel Aviv-Yafo
The Eretz Israel Museum, located in north Tel Aviv, is a multidisciplinary museum which exhibits opulent collections in the fields of Archaeology, Judaica, Ethnography, Material Culture and the Applied Arts of the Land of Israel.
The Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv (“Haaretz Museum”), is a multidisciplinary museum which exhibits opulent collections in the fields of Archaeology, Judaica, Ethnography, Material Culture and the Applied Arts of the Land of Israel.
The Museum is unique in both character and structure: it might be called a “Museum Park” comprising many exhibition pavilions within a huge campus. Every pavilion is dedicated to a different cultural subject. In the center of the park is an ancient Tel – a mound built up by thousands of years of continuous occupation – where ongoing archaeological excavations have been conducted for decades.
11. The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History – Tel Aviv
• Address: Klausner St 12, Tel Aviv-Yafo
Tel Aviv university has extensive natural history collections that were founded over 60 years ago. Israel is the only scientific center in the entire Middle East where intensive collecting, research, and teaching in the natural sciences take place, so these collections are priceless and irreplaceable; they have local, regional, and even global significance.
12. National Maritime Museum – Haifa
• Address: Derech Allenby 198, Haifa
The National Maritime Museum has a great amount of fascinating archaeological exhibits on the subject of the historic background of Haifa the ancient settlement Shikmona. Sculptures, ancient weapons, coins, etc are displayed permanently. You have opportunity to enjoy displays from the Museums collection as well as exhibitions of classic and modern arts.
13. Hecht Museum – Haifa
• Address: Abba Khoushy Ave 199, Haifa
It is based on the private collection of its founder and first director, the late Aryeh Ben- Eli. In 1972 the Museum moved to its current premises at 198 Allenby Road. It was erected on land belonging to the Ministry of Defense, and the building was made possible by the generosity of the Jack and Michael Morrison Foundation and the Haifa Municipality, with donations from Friends of the Museum in Israel and abroad.
14. Archaeological Museum – Kibbutz Ein Dor
• Address: Ein Dor
The Museum of Archaeology at Ein Dor was founded in 1986. The museum’s exhibits are arranged so as to allow for children as well as adults to enjoy and view the various artifacts.
The exhibits are placed low and are accompanied by a wealth of drawings, photographs, and reconstructions.
There is a small room for temporary exhibits of articles on loan to the museum from the Antiquities Authority. Such exhibits change each year.
An archaeological courtyard next to the museum contains reconstructed ancient implements which may be used by museum visitors to reenact ancient crafts.
15. The Ghetto Fighters’ House – Lohamei HaGeta’ot
• Address: Ghetto Fighters, Lohamei HaGeta’ot
The Ghetto Fighters’ House is a Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum in Beit Lohamei Haghetaot.
The museum named after the poet Yitzhak Katzenelson, was founded by a community of Holocaust survivors, former members of the Jewish underground in the ghetto and former partisans.
In 1948 they came to their ancient homeland, ISRAEL, to renew their life in the young State of Israel and to preserve and share the story of the Jewish People before, during and after World War II.
As the first Holocaust museum in the world, the GFH is dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust and to Holocaust education in Israel and worldwide.
The Ghetto Fighters’ House was founded on April 1949 by Holocaust survivors, ghetto fighters and partisans, who settled in the Western Galilee and set up Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot and a museum, the first Holocaust museum in the World. The kibbutz and the museum are located on the main road (Route 4) from Akko (Acre) to Nahariya.
Israel really is one of the top places to visit in the Middle East, a country full of fascinating and historic cultural and religious attractions. Plan a trip to Israel today and be sure to include museums in your itinerary so you can learn more about the history of the country. You might want to plan a trip to Israel during summer when you can enjoy the warm weather and outdoor lifestyle.
