3 Best Sights in Akko, Haifa and the Northern Coast

Founded in 1949 by survivors of the German, Polish, and Lithuanian Jewish ghettos set up by the Nazis, kibbutz Lochamei Hageta'ot commemorates their compatriots who perished in the Holocaust at this museum. Exhibits include photographs documenting the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising, and halls are devoted to different themes, among them Jewish communities before their destruction in the Holocaust; death camps; and deportations at the hands of the Nazis.

The adjacent Yad LaYeled (Children's Memorial) is dedicated to the memory of the 1½ million children who perished in the Holocaust. It's designed for young visitors, who can begin to comprehend the events of the Holocaust through a series of tableaux and images accompanied by recorded voices, allowing them to identify with individual victims without seeing shocking details. There is a small cafeteria on the premises.

There are two sections to this small but charming museum. One re-creates a 19th-century marketplace, with craftsmen's workshops such as a hatmaker and a blacksmith, filled with every tool needed to make hats and horseshoes. The other section displays a traditional Damascene living room, complete with astounding furniture and accoutrements. To get here once you're up the steps to the Ramparts, keep an eye out for the short flight of stairs heading down to the left.

Located at the sea's edge, this museum run by the Ministry of Defense is housed in several wings of the citadel built by Dahr el-Omar and then modified by Ahmed el-Jazzar in 1785. During the British Mandate in the '30s and '40s, the citadel became a high-security prison whose inmates included top members of Jewish resistance organizations, among them Ze'ev Jabotinsky and, later, Moshe Dayan. On the way in, you pass the citadel's outer wall; the difference between the large Crusader building stones and the smaller Turkish ones above is easy to spot. The original cells and their meager contents, along with photographs and documents, illustrate prison life and reconstruct the history of the Jewish resistance to British rule.