Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is the city Israel built on the sand in 1909 beside the ancient port of Jaffa, and it has become the country's other capital — the secular, sleepless, beach-facing one: fourteen kilometres of Mediterranean promenade from the old port in the north to Jaffa's hill in the south, with the beaches named and numbered between; the White City behind it, four thousand buildings in the Bauhaus of the 1930s that fleeing German architects brought, a UNESCO site since 2003, at its best on Rothschild Boulevard under the ficus trees; Neve Tzedek, the first quarter of 1887, now the prettiest; the Carmel market and Nachalat Binyamin's craft stalls; Dizengoff's square and cafés; Florentin's murals and bars; Sarona and the towers of Azrieli; and Jaffa itself — the hill, the clock tower, the flea market, the port, St Peter's, the hummus of Abu Hassan — which is older than everything and Arab in its bones. Jerusalem is an hour up the road and its opposite in every way; this page and that one are sisters, held by the Guide in double dignity.

The traveller lands at Ben Gurion, sleeps near the sea or the boulevard, and takes the city on foot and by bicycle: the promenade at seven in the morning, when the city runs and swims; the Carmel market for breakfast — sabich, a juice, the halva stall — and Nachalat Binyamin if it is Tuesday or Friday; Rothschild's length under the trees, the Bauhaus Center for the eye, Habima at the end; Neve Tzedek's lanes and the Suzanne Dellal courtyard; the beach through the afternoon; Jaffa at dusk — up the hill for the view, the flea market for the tables that fill at night, hummus and fish by the port; Florentin late; and, on Friday, the market's last hour and the strange calm of the city as Shabbat comes down and the promenade fills.

The Guide's honesty, gently: the conflict is real and present-tense — the sirens have sounded over the city, conditions change by season and by week, and the prudent traveller checks their chancellery's counsel the week they go and knows the shelter's location as residents do; the city is expensive, secular, loud and kind, and its politics are its own; Shabbat stops the buses and the trains from Friday afternoon; and Jaffa's hill at sunset with the whole white city curving north along the water is one of the great urban views of the Mediterranean, which is why the Guide holds this page as it holds Jerusalem's — as sisters, evenhanded and unhurried.