Three days in Haifa: a container port at the bottom, an immaculate garden at the top

Two nights on Mount Carmel, the Bahá'í terraces and the German Colony below them, a full day in Crusader Akko up the coast, and a cable car to a monastery on the last morning.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Haifa
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Haifa is built up the side of a mountain that ends in a working container port, which gives it a shape no other city in the country has: a downtown at sea level, a middle band of old stone neighbourhoods, and expensive flats along the ridge with a view over the whole bay to the Galilee.

Straight down the middle of that slope runs a staircase of nineteen garden terraces, watered and clipped to a standard that has to be seen to be believed, with a gold domed shrine halfway up. It is the world centre of the Bahá'í faith and by a distance the most striking thing in northern Israel.

The rest of Haifa is a mixed, unshowy, working city where Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods run into each other and nobody is trying to sell you anything. Two nights is enough for the city itself and a full day in Akko, thirty minutes north along the bay, which is where the Crusaders made their last stand.

Highlights

  • The Bahá'í terraces from the top gate on the ridge, dropping away below you in a straight line to the port
  • Crusader Akko, where the twelfth century city survives as a set of vaulted halls underneath the eighteenth century one
  • A Templar escape tunnel running under an Ottoman market town, rediscovered in the 1990s when a resident's drains blocked
  • The cable car up the cliff at Bat Galim to the monastery where the Carmelite order began

Where to stay

Haifa, two nights

Two nights, one hotel, one full day out at Akko. The city's own sights fit comfortably around it: an afternoon on arrival and a morning before the train south.

Haifa gets far fewer visitors than its size suggests, which is the main argument for coming. Restaurants take walk ins, the gardens are quiet on a weekday, and the Akko day trip costs the price of two train tickets.

Day by day

Day 1 in Haifa

The German Colony and the terraces at the end of the day

Arrive, leave the bags, and walk up the one street in Haifa that was laid out to make a point. The German Colony runs in a dead straight line from the port to the foot of the gardens, and the whole composition, avenue and terraces and shrine, lines up along a single axis to the top of the mountain.

Go up to the ridge for the last hour of daylight. The view from the top gate takes in the terraces, the port, the bay and the hills of the Galilee behind it, and the gardens are floodlit after dark.

  1. 16:00

    German Colony

    Landmark

    Two rows of low stone houses with tiled roofs and German inscriptions over the doors, built from 1868 by the Templer Society, a Protestant group from Wurttemberg who came to farm and stayed to build. The ground floors are now restaurants and it is the one part of Haifa that fills up in the evening.

  2. 17:30

    Bahá'í Gardens and World Center

    Other

    Nineteen terraces climbing the mountain in a single line, with the gold domed Shrine of the Bab at the centre and the administrative buildings of the Bahá'í faith along the ridge above. Take a bus or taxi to the top gate on Yefe Nof Street for the view down; the walk through the terraces themselves needs the free guided tour, which runs once a day.

  3. 20:00

    Dinner in Wadi Nisnas or the German Colony

    Eat

    The colony has the terraces and the tourists; the lanes of Wadi Nisnas just west of it have the hummus, the knafeh and the prices locals pay. Both are ten minutes apart on foot.

With more time: The gardens are lit at night and the view of them from the bottom of the avenue is worth walking back for after dinner. If you would rather be indoors, the museum of Japanese art up in Carmel Centre is an unlikely thing to find on a mountain in Israel and a very good small collection.

Day 2 in Haifa

Akko: Crusader halls, a Templar tunnel and an Ottoman port

Take the early train north. Akko is half an hour up the coast and it is the rarest kind of old town: a walled Ottoman port that was built directly on top of the Crusader capital, sealing the twelfth century city underneath it almost intact.

That is why a visit here goes downwards. The vaulted halls of the Knights Hospitaller, their refectory, their latrines and the tunnel the Templars cut to the harbour are all several metres below the streets you walk in.

Above ground it is still a working Arab town with a fishing harbour, a fish market and a hummus reputation that people drive up from Tel Aviv for. Buy the combined ticket at the visitor centre: it covers everything below and saves queueing twice.

  1. 10:00

    Hall of the Crusader Knights

    Culture

    A complex of vaulted halls under the Ottoman citadel, built by the Knights Hospitaller in the twelfth century and buried when the town above was rebuilt. The refectory, with its enormous columns, is one of the great surviving Crusader interiors anywhere, and the whole circuit takes an hour with the audio guide.

  2. 12:00

    Great Mosque of al-Jezzar

    Religious

    The green domed mosque of 1781, built by Ahmed al-Jazzar, the Ottoman governor who rebuilt Akko's walls and held them against Napoleon in 1799. Its courtyard is a calm rectangle of colonnades and palm trees, and al-Jazzar is buried in the corner of it. Modest dress, and closed to visitors at prayer times.

  3. 13:00

    Hummus and fried fish by the harbour

    Eat

    Akko's hummus places have a national reputation and the queues to prove it. Eat early, or go for the fish restaurants along the harbour wall instead, where the catch comes off the boats fifty metres away.

  4. 14:30

    Tunnel of the Templars

    Other

    A stone tunnel the Templars cut from their fortress on the western shore to the port, about 350 metres long, lost for centuries and found again in 1994 when a resident complained about a blocked drain. It is lit, low in places and comes out in the middle of the old town.

With more time: Two more things in Akko if you have the afternoon: the caravanserai by the harbour, a huge arcaded courtyard built in 1784 for the merchants who traded through the port, and the eighteenth century Turkish bath, which is now a walk through the hot rooms with the story of the town told around you. The sea wall walk between the two is ten minutes and free.

Day 3 in Haifa

Wadi Nisnas, then the cable car up the cliff

Spend the first hour in Wadi Nisnas, which is the neighbourhood that explains Haifa. Then take the bus or a taxi down to Bat Galim, where a cable car goes straight up the cliff to the monastery on the headland.

Both are close to the coastal railway, so the morning ends where the train south begins.

  1. 08:30

    Wadi Nisnas

    Landmark

    Haifa's main Arab quarter, a dense grid of lanes below the German Colony with a fruit and vegetable market, bakeries, and sculpture and text set into the walls as part of a permanent outdoor art project. The December festival here marks Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramadan in whatever order the calendar puts them.

  2. 10:30

    Cable car

    Other

    Three spherical cabins run from the seafront at Bat Galim up the cliff face to the top of the headland, and the ride is short, slightly alarming and the best view of the port you will get. Check it is running before you make the trip down.

  3. 11:15

    Stella Maris

    Religious

    The Carmelite order began on this mountain in the twelfth century and this church at the top of the cable car is its mother house, rebuilt in the 1830s over a cave. Napoleon's wounded were left here after the failed siege of Akko and killed; the small pyramid outside is their monument.

  4. 13:00

    Train south

    Travel

    Bat Galim station is a few minutes from the foot of the cable car, and Tel Aviv is about an hour down the coast. Nothing runs from Friday afternoon to Saturday night.

With more time: The cave below the monastery, venerated by Jews, Christians and Muslims as the place Elijah sheltered, is a short walk down the hill and free. If you are driving on rather than taking the train, the Roman and Crusader port at Caesarea is forty minutes south and worth the detour.

Before you go

Where to stay

The German Colony at the bottom of the gardens is the best base: flat, walkable, full of restaurants, and a short walk from the downtown train stations. Rooms cost noticeably less than Tel Aviv and a little less than Jerusalem.

Carmel Centre, up on the ridge, has the views and the cooler air and puts you a bus or a funicular ride from everything at the bottom. Downtown and Wadi Nisnas are the cheapest and the most interesting to walk around after dark.

Getting around

Haifa is the one Israeli city where public transport runs on Shabbat, so a Saturday here does not strand you. Buses cover the mountain, and the underground funicular that climbs from downtown to Carmel Centre in six stops is a genuine curiosity as well as a shortcut.

The slope is steeper than a map suggests. Between the bottom of the gardens and the top is the better part of two hundred metres of climbing in about a kilometre, so take the bus up and walk down rather than the other way round.

Trains run along the coast from three central stations, north to Akko and Nahariya and south to Tel Aviv in about an hour. The line is the fastest and cheapest way to Akko, and it stops for Shabbat even though the buses do not.

Visiting the Bahá'í Gardens

Entry is free. Three parts are open to visitors: the panoramic terrace at the top on Yefe Nof Street, the lower gardens at the foot on Ben Gurion Avenue, and the shrine itself in the middle, which keeps shorter morning hours.

Walking the whole staircase from top to bottom is only possible on the free guided tour, which leaves from the top gate once a day in English and cannot be joined late. Check the time on the day, because it changes and the gardens close on Bahá'í holy days.

Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off at the shrine, no picnics and no wandering off the path. It is a place of pilgrimage rather than a park, which is also why it is so immaculately kept.

Haifa does not perform for visitors and that is most of its appeal. It has one world class sight, an outstanding day trip, good cheap food and a bay view from almost every street on the mountain.

From here the Galilee is an hour east and Tel Aviv an hour south, which makes a stop here an easy thing to fit into a longer trip.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Haifa worth two nights?
Yes, if you use one of the days for Akko. The city's own sights amount to a good afternoon and a good morning, and it works best as a base for the north rather than a destination in itself. It is also the cheapest of the three big Israeli cities to sleep and eat in.
Can I get inside the Bahá'í Gardens?
The viewing terrace at the top and the gardens at the foot are open to anyone, free, on most days. Walking down through the terraces themselves is only possible on the free guided tour that leaves from the top gate once a day, so check the time before you plan the afternoon around it.
Haifa or Akko as a base?
Haifa, for the transport and the choice of hotels. Akko is smaller, more atmospheric and easily seen in a day, and the old town has a handful of beautiful guesthouses if you want the walls to yourself in the evening.
Does anything run on Saturday?
Haifa's buses do, which is unusual in Israel and makes it a good place to be on a Shabbat weekend. The trains to Akko and Tel Aviv do not, so a Saturday is for the city rather than a day trip.
Can I change the days around?
Copy it into the planner and move things about; the only fixed point is the guided tour time at the gardens.