RALLI MUSEUMS

The Ralli Museums in Caesarea are among the five Ralli Museums worldwide, an institution founded by Harry Recanati (1918-2011). The main aim of these museums is to disseminate contemporary Latin American art. Another aim is to keep alive the memory of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition, and the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, almost entirely exterminated during the Holocaust. Harry Recanati himself was born in Thessaloniki, which he left to help his father launch a private bank in Tel Aviv in the 1930s. It soon became one of the biggest banks in the new country, and Harry amassed a fortune which he devoted in part to supporting the arts.

The two museums are set in 40,000 m² of parkland:

The first building (Caesarea Ralli 1) features mainly paintings and sculptures from Latin America and Spain. A treasure among treasures, one of the rooms is dedicated to the great Catalan surrealist artist, Salvador Dali. Forty of his works are on permanent display.

One of the rooms in Caesarea Ralli 1 houses an archaeological exhibition, "Herod's Dream", which presents the different periods of the city of Caesarea: Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic and the Crusades.

The second building (Caesarea Ralli 2) exhibits paintings from the ^16th to ^18th centuries depicting biblical themes on several levels. These galleries are more classical than those in Caesarea Ralli 1, but just as fascinating.