The Jaffa – a former convent, described as an ‘anachronistic masterpiece’, where old meets new with sweeping ceilings, neoclassical ornaments and colonnaded walkways
An Israeli hotel was included in this year’s Condé Nast Traveler’s “Gold List,” a prestigious annual rollcall of the luxury travel magazine’s top places to stay in the world. The eponymous Jaffa, located in the city of the same name adjoining Tel Aviv, made an appearance in Africa and the Middle East section.
The magazine said its list was “passionately selected by our international team”. It described The Jaffa, which has 120 rooms, as “a stained-glass-windowed former convent that British designer John Pawson has turned into an anachronistic masterpiece”.
The interior has “sweeping ceilings, all powder blue and rimmed with Neoclassical ornaments” with an “altar turned bar, clad in marble. This old-meets-new formula informs the hotel’s other spaces too, from the colonnaded walkways around the citrus-scented courtyard, where all-day deli Golda’s serves bagels and lox and shakshuka, to the timeworn plastered ceilings” in the suites. The Jaffa, it wrote, is “an apt analogy for the rapid gentrification happening just outside the lobby, where Jaffa, just south of downtown Tel Aviv, has emerged as one of Israel’s most envelope-pushing creative hot spots”.
(Israel Travel News)
