Israel Museum
Major museum of archaeology and art, home to the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Shrine of the Book.
The Israel Museum opened in May 1965 on a hilltop in the Givat Ram district of Jerusalem and is the largest cultural institution in Israel. Its encyclopaedic collections span prehistory to the present day and are arranged in the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Archaeology Wing, the Edmond and Lily Safra Fine Arts Wing, and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life, alongside a dedicated Youth Wing for art education.
The original campus was designed by Alfred Mansfeld with Dora Gad as a cluster of modular stone pavilions stepping down the slope, often compared to a hillside village. A renewal project completed in 2010 almost doubled the gallery space, with Efrat-Kowalsky Architects reworking the existing buildings and James Carpenter designing new glass-clad entrance pavilions and a covered passageway linking the site.
The Shrine of the Book, designed by Armand Bartos and Frederick Kiesler, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls beneath a white dome set in a pool, facing a black basalt wall. Nearby stands the large-scale Model of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period. The Billy Rose Art Garden, laid out by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, displays modern and contemporary sculpture across terraced grounds overlooking the city.
Highlights
- Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls
- Model of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period
- Billy Rose Art Garden designed by Isamu Noguchi
- Archaeology wing tracing the region from prehistory to the Ottoman period
- Reconstructed synagogue interiors in the Jewish Art and Life wing
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