Sea Road | Allenby Between the Waves

For more than a century, Allenby Street has moved from one wave of change to the next: from a street laid out in the young city’s earliest days to today’s light rail revolution. As early as 1912, when the street was inaugurated under its original name, Derech HaYam (Sea Road), the road to the sea was far more than a line on the map. It posed a question that would stay with the city for many years: Where does Tel Aviv want to go?

For many residents, the sea was a place for leisure, bathing, and meeting up – an open space they could head to and relax in. For the city’s leaders and planners, however, the shoreline was also a municipal and economic resource: a place of commerce, tourism, industry, and development. More than a century later, those voices still echo. Allenby is once again undergoing dramatic change. The light rail works are transforming the street, its traffic, and the businesses along it. Familiar spaces are disappearing or taking on new roles, and the question of what Allenby will look like in the future is open once more. The tension between the planned city and the lived city, and between the public’s needs and the decision-makers’ vision, drives the Sea Road tour. The tour returns to the street to look at the city today: Who shapes the city? What is preserved, and what is pushed aside? And what happens to community, commerce, and street life when the city decides to change course?

The tour starts at the City Museum and heads to the sea via Mughrabi and the Photohouse (HaTzalmania). From there it climbs back through Kerem HaTeimanim (the Yemenite Quarter), the Carmel Market, and Magen David Square, and end at the Great Synagogue, now under renovation – between the street’s past and its future.

Sea Road is part of Museum on Foot, a series of tours connecting the museum and the city. As we walk together, the museum’s knowledge, the municipal archive, and residents’ stories meet the city’s streets, issues, and voices, past and present – and the perspectives participants bring.

Where?
Meeting point: City Museum Tel Aviv–Jaffa, 27 Bialik Street
End point: The Great Synagogue, 110 Allenby Street

Tour duration: Two hours

Tickets >>

* The event will be documented and shared on social media.