Jaffa, Yafo in Hebrew and Yafa in Arabic, has been a port for at least four thousand years and is mentioned in Egyptian records of the fifteenth century BCE. The cedars of Lebanon for Solomon Temple were landed here, Jonah sailed from here, and Perseus rescued Andromeda from the rock offshore, which is still pointed out. Tel Aviv grew out of it in 1909 and formally absorbed it in 1950.
The old town
The hill above the harbour was cleared and restored from the 1960s into a quarter of pale stone alleys named after zodiac signs, now largely galleries and studios. It is undeniably prettified, and the view along the coast to the Tel Aviv skyline from the top of the park is the reason people come at sunset. The Church of St Peter, the Wishing Bridge and the excavations of the Egyptian gate are all within a few minutes.
The port
Still working, with fishing boats and a row of restaurants on the quay, plus a hangar of food stalls. The fish is the point.
The flea market
Shuk HaPishpeshim, a few streets inland, sells furniture, records, jewellery and junk by day and turns into a bar and restaurant district by night. It is the least manicured part of the area and the most enjoyable.
The clock tower and Ottoman Jaffa
The clock tower on Yefet Street was built in 1903 for the twenty-fifth year of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, one of about a hundred put up across the empire. Around it are the Mahmoudiya Mosque, the old Ottoman prison, now a hotel, and Abouelafia, a bakery running since 1879 that stays open through Shabbat and sells sambusak and pizza-like flatbreads to the whole city.
The population question
Jaffa had a large Palestinian Arab population before 1948; most were displaced during the war and the number fell from around 70,000 to a few thousand. Roughly a third of residents today are Arab, and gentrification of the old town is a live local dispute. Understanding this makes the neighbourhood legible in a way that the tourist signage does not.
Practicalities
Jaffa is a 40-minute walk along the promenade from central Tel Aviv, or ten minutes by bike. Most of it operates on Shabbat.
Oranges
The Jaffa orange, a thick-skinned shamouti variety developed by Palestinian farmers in the nineteenth century, was shipped from this port across Europe and gave the town a name recognised far beyond the region. The orchards around it are long gone, built over by the city, and the brand is now applied to fruit grown elsewhere.