Artists Quarter of Safed

[1] With the encouragement of the Safed municipality, a group of artists began to restore ruins in the Mamluk neighborhood of Harat al-Wata,[2] on the border of the historic Jewish quarter, to build galleries and open exhibitions.

The first to discover Safed's artistic aura was Isaac Frenkel Frenel in 1920 and following him Moshe Castel and Mordechai Levanon in the 1930s.

Some have compared the artistic activity in Safed to that of the Barbizon group on the outskirt of Fontainbleu which attracted naturalist and impressionist painters.

[9][11] Frenkel Frenel, Rolly Sheffer and other artists were heavily inspired by the stunning panoramas and views that Tzfat offered them of Mt Meron, something that is very visible in their work.

Social activity helped to forget the dire economic situation in the years after Israeli independence (austerity).

[citation needed] Yosef Zaritsky visited Safed in 1924 with Menahem Shemi, according to Dalia Manor he remarked that Safed due to its rich Jewish history and tradition of Kabbalah and the Jewish artists connection to this tradition enabled them to grasp the spirit of the city in a way which Zaritsky said Matisse could not in Collioure which he claimed was just a beautiful place in the summer for him.

[13]The School of Paris in the Artists' Quarter of Safed of the 1950s and 1960s, was presented in 2014 at the Hecht Museum in Haifa under the curatorship of Sorin Heller.

[14] Many Israeli artists who were heavily influenced by the School of Paris settled in Safed, including Rolly Schaffer, Shimshon Holzman, Mordechai Levanon and other.

Among them, the "General Exhibition" in the old mosque of the quarter, the Frenkel Frenel Museum, the Beit Castel Gallery, the Makemat School for Oriental Music.

[22] The museum of Hungarian speaking Jewery is also located in the quarter and houses exhibitions focused on Central European Jewish culture.