Haifa's Lower City: Bars, Breweries and the Downtown Revival

For most of the past fifty years, Haifa's downtown was the part of the city everyone drove past. The Lower City, Ir Tachtit in Hebrew, was where the port offices, customs agents and shipping clerks worked from nine to five, in handsome Ottoman and British Mandate buildings that emptied out completely at dusk. Then, roughly a decade ago, artists and young restaurateurs noticed that beautiful old buildings with high ceilings were going for almost nothing, and the whole quarter woke up.

The heart of it is a cluster of streets behind the port: Natanzon, HaBankim, Hanevi'im and the little square named after the Palmer brothers. Arched stone windows and iron balconies from the 1880s now frame cocktail bars, third-wave coffee roasters, hummus institutions that have been there for eighty years, and Israeli craft breweries pouring their own beer. On a Thursday night the whole area fills up and the crowd is unmistakably Haifa: Jewish and Arab, students and shipyard workers, mixed tables and conversations flipping between Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English mid-sentence. Haifa's reputation as the country's most relaxed mixed city is not a slogan down here, it is just Thursday.

Food is the main event. Look for Palestinian home cooking in family kitchens, Levantine small plates, seafood straight off the boats, and the Arab bakeries turning out knafeh and baklava until late. Wadi Salib, the old stone neighborhood climbing the slope just behind, has been slowly restored and is worth a daytime wander for its arches and views. Turkish-era landmarks are scattered through the grid: the old Ottoman clock tower, the domed Turkish market, and the beautiful Al-Jarina mosque.

The alleys are also where you will find some of Haifa's street art. The city's crews - Broken Fingaz among them, who grew up here before going global - left work on shutters, side walls and stairwells throughout the quarter, and it changes from year to year. Walking these lanes with a guide who knows which piece is by whom, and what the Arabic and Hebrew lettering means, turns a pretty wall into a story about the city.

Getting there is easy: the Lower City is walking distance from the cruise terminal and the train station, and the Hof HaCarmel and Merkaz HaShmona stations put you at its edge. Come in the evening. Our Haifa Culinary and Haifa Graffiti tours both spend serious time here, eating and looking up. Contact us to book one.