Description of the attraction
Mini-Israel miniature park owes its birth to the Israeli businessman Ayran Gazit. In 1986, Gazit visited the famous Madurodam - a miniature city in the Netherlands - and got fired up with the idea: something like this should appear in Israel! It took 16 years to bring the idea to life. At first, the first Palestinian intifada (a Palestinian uprising that lasted from 1987 to 1991) thwarted, but by 2002 the park had finally appeared.
It was built by a team of designers and architects, which consisted of more than a hundred people, including immigrants from the former USSR. They created 385 accurate models of Israel's most important sites - historical, architectural, religious, cultural - and placed them on 3 hectares. The shape of the park resembles the Star of David, each of the six triangles filled with copies of objects belonging to different districts of Israel.
The models are made of polymer materials and stone using computer calculations and are mostly made at a scale of 1:25. The size is not the smallest: skyscrapers are taller than an adult, churches are taller than a child. This scale allows visitors to see all the details, to study the architectural details - and the towers of the Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv, and the train station in Haifa, and the Basilica of Borenia in Jerusalem. A tourist attraction can be useful - many, looking at copies of attractions, mentally make a list of what else to see in Israel "live".
In this toy country, which is inhabited by 25 thousand seven-centimeter "inhabitants", everything is moving. The praying Jews at the Wailing Wall and Muslims on the Temple Mount bow, ships enter the port, airplanes taxi to the landing strip, cars and trains go, wind turbines are spinning, cranes are working at a construction site. Tourists move from stage to stage: here they milk cows in a kibbutz, here an athlete receives a medal, there is a plant for the production of frozen juices, and there is a picnic in the forest. In the evening, when it gets dark, small windows light up in all model buildings.
The episodes of the centuries-old history of the Jewish people were also recreated: the victory of Joshua over five Canaanite armies (in that battle, according to the Old Testament, he stopped the sun and moon in the sky so that night would not fall); the battle of Judas Maccabee with the Greeks who desecrated the Jerusalem temple; desperate defense of the fortress of Masada, whose defenders chose to kill themselves, but not surrender to the Romans …
The territory of the park is full of not only movements, but also sounds. The famous Israeli singer Goran Gaon sings "Jerusalem, Jerusalem", the fans at the stadium support their favorite team, the commander of the guard of honor at the Knesset shouts orders, the bells ring in the Assumption Abbey on the top of Mount Zion, the famous violinist Isaac Stern conducts a violin master class.
Surprised visitors do not immediately believe that all the tiny trees are alive here. But this is so - even in a miniature replica of the Haifa Bahá'í gardens, all the trees are real. There are 70 thousand plants in the park, of which 17 thousand are bonsai, which are grown in the local nursery.
