Up the Mountain: Haifa's Subway, Cable Car and Aerial Gondola

Haifa is the only Israeli city built vertically. The port sits at sea level, the Bahai Gardens climb the slope, and the smart residential neighborhoods sit five hundred meters up on the Carmel ridge. Getting between them is a genuine engineering problem, and the solutions the city came up with are charming enough to be attractions in their own right.

Start with the Carmelit, Israel's only underground railway and one of the smallest subway systems in the world. Opened in 1959 with French engineering, it is really a funicular - two cars on a cable, counterbalancing each other as one climbs and one descends - running through a tunnel from Paris Square in the Lower City up to Gan HaEm on the Carmel. Six stations, about eight minutes end to end, and a rise of some 270 meters. Because the whole line is on a slope, the carriages and the station platforms are built in stepped tiers, which feels delightfully odd the first time. It closed for a long refurbishment and came back with new cars, so the ride is smooth and the strangeness is intact. Locals use it as a commute; visitors should use it as the cheapest ride in Israel with a story attached.

Then the Stella Maris cable car, three round glass gondolas swinging down the cliff face from the Carmelite monastery at the top to Bat Galim beach at the bottom. It is short - a few minutes - but you hang over open rock with the Mediterranean spread out below and the whole bay to your right. Children adore it. Ride down, walk the Bat Galim promenade, eat something by the water, and take the train or a car back up.

The newest of the three is the Rakavlit, an aerial cable car that opened in 2022 and is, unusually, part of the public transport network rather than a tourist ride. Its gondolas glide for about four and a half kilometers from the Hof HaCarmel transport hub up over eucalyptus woods and highways to the Technion and Haifa University campuses, with the bay opening up behind you as you rise. It takes around twenty minutes, costs a normal bus fare, and the view from the top station at Haifa University - which also has an observation floor in its tower, the tallest building in the city - is the widest panorama in northern Israel.

A note for planning: the Carmelit and the Rakavlit do not run on Shabbat, from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening. If your day in Haifa is a Saturday, the cable car at Stella Maris and a vehicle are your friends. On our Haifa tours we use the mountain rather than fight it - driving the ridge road for the viewpoints, and building in a ride or two because they are simply fun. Contact us to plan your Haifa day.