The Israel Museum, on a hilltop in western Jerusalem, is one of the great museums of the world and Israel’s largest cultural institution. Founded in 1965, just seventeen years after the establishment of the state, the museum was an act of cultural ambition — a declaration that this small, young, embattled country would build a world-class repository of art, archaeology, and civilization. Its collection spans 5,000 years of art and archaeology, from prehistoric tools to contemporary installations, and includes two objects that, by themselves, would justify any museum’s existence: the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Model of Second Temple Jerusalem. Today the museum’s campus covers 20 acres and houses nearly 500,000 objects, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world each year.
The Shrine of the Book
The Shrine of the Book is the museum’s most iconic building, a white dome shaped like the lid of the clay jars in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found at Qumran. The building, designed by architects Armand Bartos and Frederick Kiesler, was deliberately conceived as a piece of symbolic architecture: the white dome representing the Sons of Light from the scrolls, set against a black basalt wall representing the Sons of Darkness — the cosmic struggle described in the War Scroll. Inside, in a darkened, climate-controlled gallery, the original scrolls are displayed. The Great Isaiah Scroll, the most complete manuscript, is displayed in its entirety around the central drum. The Community Rule, the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Hymns, and other texts are displayed in rotating exhibitions. The atmosphere is deliberately reverent: dim light, hushed visitors, and the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, written over 2,000 years ago, glowing in their cases. These manuscripts, hidden in caves for two millennia and discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy in 1947, are among the most significant archaeological finds in history.
The Second Temple Model
In the museum’s outdoor garden, a 1:50 scale model recreates the city of Jerusalem as it appeared in 66 CE, just before the Roman destruction. The model covers nearly an acre and includes every known building: the Temple with its courts and colonnades, the palaces of Herod, the streets, the markets, the walls, and the residential quarters. The model was built by the historian Michael Avi-Yonah based on the descriptions of Josephus, the Mishnah, and archaeological evidence. It was originally commissioned for the Holyland Hotel and later moved to the museum grounds, where it was meticulously restored and updated with the latest archaeological findings. Standing beside the model, you see the city that Jesus knew, that the Pharisees debated in, and that the Romans destroyed. It is one of the best tools anywhere for understanding the geography and scale of ancient Jerusalem — the massive Temple platform, the narrow streets of the Lower City, the grand palaces of the Upper City, and the formidable walls that the Romans breached only after months of brutal siege.
The Archaeology Wing
The archaeology collection is one of the finest in the world, covering the entire sweep of civilization in the Land of Israel from the Stone Age to the Ottoman period. The wing takes visitors on a chronological journey through millennia of human history in this crossroads land — from prehistoric flint tools and Chalcolithic ossuaries, through the Canaanite and Israelite periods, to the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, and Ottoman eras. Highlights include the anthropoid coffins from the Philistine cemetery at Deir el-Balah, a tiny ivory pomegranate once thought to have come from Solomon’s Temple, though its inscription was later questioned by scholars, the Bar Kokhba letters, and the Pilate inscription from Caesarea, the only archaeological evidence mentioning the Roman governor who condemned Jesus. The wing also features stunning glass collections from the Roman period, intricate mosaic floors from ancient synagogues, and jewelry and pottery that illuminate the daily lives of people who lived in this land thousands of years ago. The ancient synagogue section features magnificent mosaic floors from Beit Alpha, Hamat Tiberias, and other excavated synagogues — zodiac wheels, menorahs, and biblical scenes that reveal how Jewish communities decorated their houses of worship in the centuries after the destruction of the Temple.
The Synagogue Route
One of the museum’s most unexpected treasures is its collection of four complete historic synagogue interiors, each transported piece by piece from its original location to Jerusalem and meticulously reconstructed inside the museum. The 18th-century synagogue from Vittorio Veneto in northern Italy gleams with Baroque gilt and plaster, a jewel of Italian Jewish craftsmanship from a community that no longer exists. The 16th-century Kadavumbagam Synagogue from Cochin, India, features carved wooden interiors with motifs borrowed from the Hindu temples and mosques that surrounded it — a testament to how Jewish communities absorbed the aesthetics of their host cultures while maintaining their own identity. The Tzedek ve-Shalom Synagogue from Paramaribo, Suriname, founded in 1736, represents the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities of the New World. And a painted wooden synagogue from Horb am Main, Germany, preserves the folk art tradition of the small-town European Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Together, the four synagogues form a journey across continents and centuries, showing how the same prayers were spoken in radically different settings — from tropical Suriname to Alpine Italy to the Malabar coast of India.
The Art Collections
The art wings cover European art from the Renaissance to the modern period, including works by Rembrandt, Monet, Renoir, and Chagall. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist galleries are particularly strong, with paintings that rival the holdings of far larger European museums. The contemporary art galleries feature Israeli and international artists, tracing the development of Israeli art from the early pioneers who painted the landscape of the young country to today’s cutting-edge conceptual and video artists. The Billy Rose Art Garden, designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, displays large-scale sculptures by Picasso, Rodin, Henry Moore, and Anish Kapoor in a terraced landscape garden that is itself a work of art. Noguchi carved the garden into the hillside in a series of semicircular terraces inspired by the ancient agricultural landscape of the Judean hills, creating a seamless dialogue between art and land that makes this one of the most beautiful sculpture gardens in the world.
The Youth Wing
The museum’s Ruth Youth Wing is one of the largest museum education centers in the world, with studios, classrooms, and interactive exhibitions designed for children and families. The recycling room, where children create art from discarded materials, is a favorite. The Youth Wing reflects the museum’s founding philosophy that art and cultural education should be accessible to everyone, and it hosts tens of thousands of schoolchildren each year, many of them visiting a museum for the first time.
Visit with Hoshen Tours
The Israel Museum requires at least three hours and rewards a full day. Hoshen Tours focuses each visit on the themes most relevant to the group: the scrolls and archaeology for those exploring the biblical story, the art collections for culture-focused visitors, or a combination of both. Whether you stand before the Dead Sea Scrolls in the hushed Shrine of the Book or gaze at the Second Temple Model and imagine the city in its glory, the Israel Museum brings the story of this land to life in a way that no other institution can match.