10 Best Sights in Haifa and the Northern Coast, Israel

There are two sections to this small but charming museum. One re-creates a 19th-century marketplace, with craftsmen's workshops such as a hatmaker and a blacksmith, filled with every tool needed to make hats and horseshoes. The other section displays a traditional Damascene living room, complete with astounding furniture and accoutrements. To get here once you're up the steps to the Ramparts, keep an eye out for the short flight of stairs heading down to the left.

In Kibbutz Sdot Yam just outside Caesarea, this excellent museum houses many of the remarkable artifacts found by kibbutz members as they plowed their fields in the 1940s. Archaeological excavations have uncovered more. The small museum has arguably the best collection of late-Roman sculpture and figurines in Israel, with impressive holdings of rare Roman and Byzantine gemstones; a large variety of coins minted in Caesarea over the ages; and oil lamps, jewelry, and urns discovered on the sea floor.

The rather dull name of this museum belies the dramatic story it tells of the heroic efforts to bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine from war-torn Europe in defiance of British policy. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, the British issued the so-called White Paper, which effectively strangled Jewish immigration to Palestine. Out of 63 clandestine ships that tried to run the blockade after the war's end, all but five were intercepted, and their passengers were deported to Cyprus. The museum—full of moving stories of courage and tenacity—is centered on the Af Al Pi Chen (Hebrew for "Nevertheless"), a landing craft, which attempted to bring 434 Jewish refugees ashore. A photomural and model of the celebrated ship the Exodus recalls the story of the 4,530 refugees aboard who were forcibly transferred back to Germany in 1947, but not before the British forces opened fire on the ship. The history of Israel's navy, told here in impressive detail, begins with the transformation of these clandestine immigration craft into warships.

The museum is dedicated to the 30,000 people who came to Palestine during the First Aliya (a period of settlement from 1882 until 1904). Life-size model displays highlighting local immigrants (like Zachariya, the seed vendor, and Izer, the cobbler) illustrate life at that time. A film traces the struggles of a family who came from Europe in this difficult period of Israel's modern history. Commissioned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the museum's three-floor building is a fine example of late-19th-century Ottoman-style architecture, built of white stone with a central pediment capped by a tile roof. During World War I, the Turks used it as a military hospital.

Founded in 1949 by survivors of the German, Polish, and Lithuanian Jewish ghettos set up by the Nazis, kibbutz Lochamei Hageta'ot commemorates their compatriots who perished in the Holocaust at this museum. Exhibits include photographs documenting the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising, and halls are devoted to different themes, among them Jewish communities before their destruction in the Holocaust; death camps; and deportations at the hands of the Nazis.

The adjacent Yad LaYeled (Children's Memorial) is dedicated to the memory of the 1½ million children who perished in the Holocaust. It's designed for young visitors, who can begin to comprehend the events of the Holocaust through a series of tableaux and images accompanied by recorded voices, allowing them to identify with individual victims without seeing shocking details. There is a small cafeteria on the premises.

It's worth the trip to Haifa University to see this museum's archaeological treasures. At the summit of Mount Carmel, in the main campus tower (called Eshkol Tower), the museum has a collection that spans the millennia from the Chalcolithic era to the Roman and Byzantine periods, concentrating on "The People of Israel in Eretz Israel." The artifacts include religious altars and lamps, Bronze Age figurines, inscribed seals from the biblical period, and a 2,400-year-old ship. Featured prominently are finds from the excavations of Jerusalem's Temple Mount. A separate art wing displays a small collection of paintings, mostly impressionist works by Monet, Soutine, and Modigliani, among others. The roof observation deck, on the 27th floor, has spectacular views.

This very worthwhile museum next to Kibbutz Nahsholim holds a rich collection of finds from nautical digs and excavations at nearby Tel Dor. It's in the partly restored former glass factory opened by Baron Edmond de Rothschild in 1891 to serve the wineries of Zichron Ya'akov. The sequence of peoples who settled, conquered, or passed through Dor—from the Canaanites to the Phoenicians to Napoléon and his forces—can be traced through these artifacts. Of particular interest is the bronze cannon that Napoléon's vanquished troops dumped into the sea during their retreat from Akko to Egypt in May 1799. An informative film in English illuminates the history of the ancient port city of Dor.

About 5,000 years of maritime history in the Mediterranean and Red Sea are told with model ships, ancient anchors, coins minted with nautical symbols, navigational instruments, and other artifacts. There are also intriguing underwater finds from nearby excavations and shipwrecks. The ancient-art collection is one of the finest in the country, comprising mostly Greek and Roman stone and marble sculpture, Egyptian textiles, Greek pottery, and encaustic grave portraits from Fayyum, in Lower Egypt. Particularly rare are the figures of fishermen from the Hellenistic period, as well as a 1st-century wooden boat rescued in the 1980s from the muddy bottom of the Sea of Galilee.

In Caesarea's villa area, you can't miss the two Spanish colonial–style buildings of the Ralli Museum, with their red-tile roofs and terraces. One of these dazzling white buildings houses an exhibit on the ancient city's history, and the second building, in a Moorish style, examines the golden age of Spanish Jewry in the Middle Ages. It's a pleasure to wander along the walls of the courtyard and gaze at the sculptures of various dignitaries such as Maimonides and Spinoza. Inside are paintings with biblical themes by European artists of the 16th to 18th centuries. Rotating exhibitions display contemporary Latin American art.

Located at the sea's edge, this museum run by the Ministry of Defense is housed in several wings of the citadel built by Dahr el-Omar and then modified by Ahmed el-Jazzar in 1785. During the British Mandate in the '30s and '40s, the citadel became a high-security prison whose inmates included top members of Jewish resistance organizations, among them Ze'ev Jabotinsky and, later, Moshe Dayan. On the way in, you pass the citadel's outer wall; the difference between the large Crusader building stones and the smaller Turkish ones above is easy to spot. The original cells and their meager contents, along with photographs and documents, illustrate prison life and reconstruct the history of the Jewish resistance to British rule.