Israel occupies a genuinely small territory, roughly comparable in size to Wales or New Jersey, yet holds sites of central religious significance to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam within remarkably close proximity to one another, a concentration of sacred geography found in few other places on Earth. Jerusalem’s Old City alone contains the Western Wall, the last remaining retaining wall of the ancient Jewish Second Temple; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally identified as the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial; and the Dome of the Rock, from which Islamic tradition holds the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, all within a walking radius of a few hundred metres.
The modern State of Israel was established in 1948, following decades of Jewish immigration to the region and the end of the British Mandate that had governed Palestine since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, a founding that remains deeply, and to this day unresolved, contested by the Palestinian population also native to the same land.
A Landscape Shaped by Genuine Geographic Extremes
Israel contains an unusually wide range of landscapes for its size, from the fertile Galilee region in the north to the arid Negev desert covering roughly half the country’s southern territory, and includes the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth’s land surface at over 430 metres below sea level, whose extreme salinity allows swimmers to float on its surface without effort. This geographic compression means visitors can move between snow-capped mountains, Mediterranean coastline, and desert terrain within a single day’s travel.
Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest metropolitan area, contains the White City, a collection of over 4,000 buildings built in the Bauhaus and International architectural styles by European Jewish architects who emigrated in the 1930s, recognised by UNESCO as the largest concentration of this architectural style anywhere in the world.
Painting Ancient Stone Beneath Mediterranean Light
Israel’s weathered ancient stone architecture beneath bright Mediterranean sky gives a watercolourist warm, layered colour and genuine historical depth to work with. We’ve captured that character in our own Israel Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of the Middle East for a wall at home.
Small enough to cross in a single day and layered with significance for three major world religions, Israel remains a territory where geography and history have always sat unusually close together.