Visiting the “White City” World Heritage Site

 

Minister Hendricks pledges German federal government’s support in preserving Tel Aviv’s “White City”.

 

Tel Aviv’s “White City” – the world’s largest ensemble of Classical Modernist buildings in the Bauhaus style. The UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site was the main destination of Barbara Hendricks, Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety during her recent trip to Tel Aviv in mid-March. Among other things she visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and the Knesset. On 14 May Hendricks inaugurated the “White City” Centre together with Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv. During the ceremony she handed the Mayor a symbolic cheque for 250,000 euros. Among other things, the money will be used to set up a centre of excellence for the restoration of the “White City”, which is long since overdue.

 

“We will support the City of Tel Aviv in its efforts to preserve this important cultural heritage,” the Minister explained, adding: “In a first step, we will set up a centre of excellence for the “White City” and thus create a platform for the quarter’s future restoration.”

In the Centre of Excellence for Architecture and Monument Preservation, construction experts, craftspeople and artists will develop concepts for the rehabilitation of the quarter– in close collaboration with the people living there. Over the next ten years the Federal Construction Ministry will donate 2.8 million euros to the centre, which will be set up in the Max Liebling building, a significant historical monument in the heart of the “White City”. It is due to open in 2017.

 

The evolution of the “White City” is closely bound up with the fate of German Jewish architects, who were able to flee the country after 1933.