Louis Promenade

The promenade sits on the northern edge of the Carmel ridge, which is the reason Haifa is described vertically. Below it, in order, are the Carmel slope, the mid-slope districts, the downtown and the port, and then the water. The bay curves away to the north-east towards Acre and Nahariya, and the Galilee headlands close it off at the far side. This is a working view rather than a scenic one: container stacks, tanks, breakwaters and cranes occupy the middle distance, and they are a fair account of what the city does for a living.

The Bahai terraces are the thing most people come to photograph, and the geometry is worth understanding before arriving. The 19 terraces and the golden-domed Shrine of the Bab climb the slope directly below Yefe Nof, and the axis they form continues down through the German Colony to the sea. From the promenade the terraces are to one side rather than dead ahead; the framed, head-on photograph of the whole staircase is taken from the Bahai gardens' own viewing balcony at 61 Yefe Nof, which is a separate site with its own gate and its own hours, immediately across the street.

The Haifa tourism association's page for the promenade lists the panorama as taking in Haifa Bay, the Krayot, Acre, Nahariya, the mountains of the Galilee and Rosh Hanikra, and it adds Mount Hermon, the northernmost point in the country. Hermon is a long way off across the Galilee, and it is not a sight to plan a trip around. The nearer half of that list, out to Rosh Hanikra, is the reliable part.

The promenade was donated, not municipally budgeted. Paul and May Goldschmidt were Haifa residents who had immigrated from South Africa, and they gave the walkway to the city in memory of their son Louis, who was killed in a traffic accident on 15 May 1971. The Hebrew accounts do not agree on his Hebrew name: the article on the promenade gives Louis (Uriel), the article on the surrounding neighbourhood gives Louis (Ariel).

Paul Goldschmidt's other work is on the same hillside. He was the principal contractor of the Bahai gardens, and when the promenade was laid out it was designed to double as an entrance to them from the ridge. That entrance is no longer in use, which is why a visitor arriving today has to walk to the separate balcony gate at number 61 rather than stepping from the promenade into the gardens.

The gift extended past the paving. Hebrew Wikipedia's account records that the parking and the public conveniences serving the promenade were funded by the family as well, and that the Goldschmidts later paid for a refurbishment of the Haifa educational zoo, further up the ridge, including electric carts that made the zoo usable by people with mobility problems. The zoo carries their son's name too.

The dates put the promenade slightly ahead of the thing it now overlooks. It opened in 1992; the 19 Bahai terraces below it, to Fariborz Sahba's design, were not opened to the public until June 2001. For nine years this was a viewpoint over a building site.

The idea that this particular stretch of ridge is where you look at Haifa from is nearly a century older than the promenade, and it is German. Kaiser Wilhelm II arrived in Haifa on 25 October 1898 aboard the imperial yacht Hohenzollern, stepping ashore on a pier 65 metres long and 6 metres wide that the Templer engineer Gottlieb Schumacher had built for him beside the German Colony so that the Kaiser could first set foot on German-built ground. That same day the party went up to Carmelheim, the German settlement on the mountain, and on the way back stopped to look down on Haifa and the colony from the heights.

Friedrich Keller, one of the Templer leaders, decided to donate land on the Carmel in acknowledgement of the visit. About a year later the Templers presented a plan for a park running from the road up to the Carmel as far as the spot from which the Kaiser and his party had looked out. The far end of it was marked on the plan as Kaiserplatz, the Kaiser's terrace, and an obelisk to Wilhelm and his wife Auguste Victoria was to stand there.

The obelisk was inaugurated at the top of the Carmel on 25 October 1910, twelve years to the day after the landing. A German warship was to have anchored in Haifa with a party of sailors for the ceremony, but the plan was dropped amid German and Turkish tension following the murder of the Templer farmer Fritz Unger at Neuhardthof. Every October until the First World War the Templers held a Kaiserfest on the spot.

The war ended that. A gun position was dug in beside the obelisk, the British took the height when they captured Haifa, the park land was expropriated, and the monument was eventually destroyed. The Germans rebuilt it; then the Templers were deported during the Second World War, the site was neglected, and the obelisk disappeared under scrub.

Almost nothing. The obelisk standing in the small grove at the promenade's western end is a reconstruction, tidied up for the 1982 visit of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the Kaiser's grandson, at the urging of Alex Carmel, the first scholar to work seriously on the Templers in this country. The rebuilt column faces south. The original faced north.

The lettering was reconstructed too, and the differences are recorded. The original cut WILHELM II, J.R., Auguste, Victorja, J.R. and 25 Okt. 1898, with full stops in places the new tablet does not use; the replacement reads AUGUSTA VICTORIA and spells the date out as 25 OCTOBER 1898. Explanatory panels in Hebrew and English were put up with it.

The naval gun beside the obelisk is a later arrival and belongs to nobody who was here. It is a Belgian muzzle-loader of French pattern, made at Liege in 1857, brought up from the memorial garden on Hasan Shukri Street and placed here, in the Hebrew account's phrase, as a counterweight to the German and Turkish side that lost the war.

The rest of the promenade is honest 1990s municipal landscaping laid over 1950s public gardens, which is not a criticism of it. What is genuinely old on this stretch is the sight line itself, and the fact that somebody thought it worth formalising in about 1899.

The promenade runs between the hotel at its eastern end, which has traded as the Nof and as the Bay View, and the Kaiser's obelisk at the west. Within that stretch it absorbs the Yefe Nof garden, laid out by the Haifa architect Shmuel Rozov as part of the city's public gardens programme in the 1950s, with a pool fed by a small waterfall. The bronze doe with her fawn at the water's edge is credited to the sculptor Aryeh Reznik, though the attribution is not airtight: the source the Hebrew account cites for it is a 1954 newspaper notice about a new sculpture in Gan Ha'em, the larger park a few streets away.

The rounded building standing on diagonal columns above the walk is the Rondo, the restaurant of the Dan Carmel hotel, also by Rozov, who designed the hotel; work on it began in 1961 and it opened in March 1963. The original drawings put a kiosk underneath the restaurant. It was never built, and the open apron under the Rondo became part of the promenade instead.

The observation terrace is built out above the street rather than set back behind it, which is what gives the drop its effect. The tourism association's own description of the walk lists flowering cultivated planting set into Mediterranean scrub, wide open lawns alongside smaller hidden corners, benches, and a large children's playground.

At the far end from the obelisk, between Beit Mainz and the Panorama towers, stands a memorial to the 73 soldiers killed when two Yasur transport helicopters collided over She'ar Yashuv on 4 February 1997. Five of the dead were Haifa residents. The Hebrew account of the neighbourhood places the memorial at the end of the promenade; the account of the disaster gives its address on Sderot HaNassi, the boulevard immediately behind.

• Yefe Nof garden and the pool with the doe and fawn, from the 1950s
• The Rondo, the Dan Carmel's round restaurant on diagonal columns
• The viewing terrace cantilevered over Yefe Nof Street
• A large children's playground and open lawns
• The memorial to the 73 killed in the 1997 helicopter collision
• The Kaiser's obelisk and the 1857 Belgian gun, at the western end

The single most common mistake here is treating the promenade and the Bahai gardens' upper viewpoint as one place. They are two, on opposite sides of Yefe Nof Street, and only one of them has rules. The Bahai World Centre's own site gives the balcony's address as 61 Yefe Nof, open daily 09:00 to 17:00, closed on Bahai holy days and on Yom Kippur, with entrance free of charge and no reservation required. It describes three viewing platforms and a water fountain reached by two flights of stairs.

The dress and conduct rules apply inside that gate and not on the promenade: shoulders and knees covered with no tears in the fabric, no weapons, no animals, and nothing to eat or drink beyond a bottle of water, with chewing gum and smoking also excluded. The balcony is a viewpoint only, and the descent through the terraces from it is not part of a self-guided visit.

The Bahai site returns the favour and points visitors back across the road, noting that the Louis Promenade is directly opposite and gives pedestrian access to nearby shops and restaurants. It also publishes the practical details that the promenade's own operator does not: street parking on Yefe Nof, two marked accessible parking spaces 50 metres west of the balcony entrance, and a public toilet 100 metres east of it, the nearest accessible one on the street.

One current closure is worth checking before travelling. As published in August 2026, the Shrine of the Bab itself is closed to the public from 9 August to 5 September 2026, while the outer gardens stay open daily 09:00 to 17:00. The balcony on Yefe Nof is a viewpoint over the terraces rather than an entrance to the shrine, so this does not shut it, but the gardens' hours move for Bahai holy days and should be confirmed on the day.