Do you know this too? You know that you are about to reach a beautiful place, but you can’t imagine it because the way, the road there is anything but promising?

It’s the same when you drive to Safed. We follow the serpentines up the mountain kilometer by kilometer, I look at the navigation device with uncertainty, although I know that we are about to reach Safed.

This city, or this “pearl” as I like to call it, lies at an altitude of 840m. That’s not bad for Israel, especially if you’ve previously been to the Sea of Galilee at -200m.

Now a few facts:

The city was first mentioned in 66 AD. Flavius Josephus had it fortified and expanded as a defense against the Romans. Over the centuries, the city and its people have gone through a lot. Around 1560, under Ottoman rule, there were around 10,000 Jews living in the city. Many of them had fled Spain in 1492. In 1837, large parts of Safed were destroyed by an earthquake.

It is also important to note that the city is one of the great holy sites in Judaism.

We were mainly there because of the recent history, or rather what history has done to the city. We parked our car not far from the center of the old town and made our way into a world of its own, the artists’ quarter of Safed.

World-famous artists have lived and worked here since the early 1940s.

One gallery follows the next in the district. The flair of the beautiful gray stone houses, which have been lovingly restored and decorated with flowers, can hardly be put into words. The narrow, winding alleyways and architecture could just as easily have been found in southern Italy or Tuscany.

As you enter the neighborhood, you immediately notice oriental scents. Israeli music is playing in many of the houses and you can hear a wide variety of people chatting animatedly in the small cafés and restaurants. There are works of art to admire everywhere. Jewelry, pictures, paintings and beautiful handicrafts can be found not only on the main streets, but also in backyards and small boutiques in winding corners. A detour here is a must.

One of our highlights was a visit to a tunnel that runs under the town’s houses. What you can see dates back to the time before the great earthquake, i.e. before 1837. In the past, after major destruction, whether wars or earthquakes, it was customary to level the destroyed houses, fill the cavities with sand and build the new houses on top.

Anyone who discovers so much is also very hungry. All right! I was very hungry. That’s why it’s definitely worth stopping off at one of the small restaurants and snack stands.

We opted for Israeli cuisine and really enjoyed it.

As we still wanted to swim at the Sea of Galilee, we had to say goodbye to the city.

Safed is about an hour’s drive from us, Gan Ner