It is bordered by Nachlaot and Sha'arei Hesed to the north, Talbiya and Kiryat Shmuel to the south, and the Valley of the Cross to the west.

Early on, it attracted German-Jewish immigrants,[2] affluent Sephardic families, and key leaders of the Yishuv, earning a reputation as an aristocratic enclave.

[6] The Jewish National Fund (JNF) bought the land and commissioned the German-Jewish architect Richard Kauffmann to design a garden neighborhood.

[6] Kauffmann, who referred to it as the Janziriah project, prepared plans for a neighbourhood featuring homes surrounded by gardens and an orderly, but not too strict, grid of streets and footpaths on either sides of a main boulevard, avoiding an excessive sense of symmetry.

[5] The Gymnasia Rehavia high school, Yeshurun Synagogue, and the Jewish Agency building were built on this land, overlooking the Old City.

[5] Rehavia's general outline was modelled after the garden cities of Europe (especially Germany, e.g. the quarters of Dahlem or Grunewald in Berlin), while the architecture of the buildings shows an emphasis on the International Style popular at the time.

Many of the country's early leaders lived in Rehavia: David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who lived on Ben Maimon street;[10] Zionist leader Arthur Ruppin; Menachem Ussishkin, head of the Jewish National Fund; Golda Meir, Israel's fourth prime minister; Daniel Auster, the first Jewish mayor of Jerusalem, and philosophers Hugo Bergmann and Gershon Scholem.

Landmark buildings in Rehavia include the headquarters of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the windmill on Ramban Street, and the Ratisbonne Monastery.