A nostalgic, European-style city square has been renovated once again, this time commemorating a century since Hayim Nahman Bialik’s arrival in Tel Aviv

Bialik Square is one of Tel Aviv’s oldest public spaces, named for poet laureate Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934), who left Berlin to settle in Mandate Palestine’s only exclusively Jewish city. The square’s recent rededication, after the latest in a series of refurbishments over the years, coincided with the centennial of Bialik’s arrival in 1924, when a street was named in his honor. A year later, when Tel Aviv City Hall relocated there, the end of the street was upgraded to a square, also named for him. It was hoped that, coupled with the imposing new town hall, the European gentility of the square on which the national poet now built his home would soon turn the area into a tourist attraction.

Bialik Square has undergone various facelifts and rededication ceremonies in the past century. Its original gold fish pond, complete with fountain and water lilies, was replaced in the 1970s by a mosaic-inlaid, three-column sculpture purporting to summarize three millennia of local history. Designed by Tel Aviv artist Nahum Gutman, this unappealing installation was moved thirty-five years later to a location close to Gutman’s house and art gallery in the city’s Neve Zedek neighborhood. In its place, the municipality rebuilt the pond.

By then, the city fathers had pivoted from modernist brutalism (resulting in the destruction of the iconic Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in favor of Israel’s first skyscraper) to historic preservation. Consequently, the aforementioned hotel was revamped in 2008 as a museum of Tel Aviv.