Tel Aviv was established in 1909 as a modern garden suburb of Jaffa, and now forms the gateway to Israel, embracing an abundance of cultures, languages and life-styles. At the same time, it is the first modern Hebrew city, a laboratory for the Jewish state, and therefore the centre of Israel's new cultural identity. Based on interviews with many inhabitants, and on information gathered from books, travel literature, newspaper articles and memoirs, this is an account of the city from its origins to the present. Tel Aviv is presented as a centre of immigration that contains reminders of each immigrant's mother country; as a catalyst between the East and the West; and, not least, as a place of transformation for Jews who fled from the Nazi terror.