Dizengoff Center () is a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

at the intersection of Dizengoff Street and King George Street in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. The mall is named for

Meir Dizengoff Meir Dizengoff (; born Meer Yankelevich Dizengof, ); 25 February 1861 – 23 September 1936) was a Zionism, Zionist leader and politician and the founder and first Mayor of Tel Aviv, mayor of Tel Aviv (1911–1922 as head of town planning, 1922� ...

, the first mayor of Tel Aviv.

History

Dizengoff Center, designed by Israeli architect Yitzhak Yashar, was Israel's first mall. The center was built on the site of the Nordiya neighborhood. Construction began in 1972, and the first store opened five years later in 1977. The rest of the mall was finished in 1983. On March 4, 1996, during the Jewish holiday of

Purim Purim (; , ) is a Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jews, Jewish people from Genocide, annihilation at the hands of an official of the Achaemenid Empire named Haman, as it is recounted in the Book of Esther (u ...

, the Dizengoff Center suicide bombing outside Dizengoff Center killed 13 people, many of them youngsters in costume. On July 13, 2022, the first

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

store in Israel opened in Dizengoff Center.

Overview

The mall has around 420 stores, one movie theater (Lev Dizengoff, with 6 screens), restaurants, an internet cafe, a design center holding exhibitions from around the world (Soho), specialty stores (comic books, video games, gadgets, stamp-collecting, posters), a rooftop swimming pool and two gyms. The mall is divided into two parts and straddles both sides of Dizengoff Street with the two parts linked by

skywalk The SkyWalk is an approximately 160 metre enclosed walkway connecting Union Station to the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre (SkyDome) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Part of Toronto's PATH network, the SkyWalk passes above the York Street ' s ...

s and underground passages. The underground parts of Dizengoff Center include a

bomb shelter A bomb shelter is a structure designed to provide protection against the effects of a bomb. Types of shelter Different kinds of bomb Shelter (building), shelters are configured to protect against different kinds of attack and strengths of host ...

fully equipped with toilets and showers using underground aquifer waters, and rooms for families. The mall also hosts weekly events. Every Friday (except for Jewish holidays) the mall hosts the "Food Fair", Israel's largest food festival, with foods from a large variety of cuisines.Tourist tip #238 / Dizengoff Center food fair
- Haaretz On Thursdays and Fridays it hosts a designers boutique, which includes fashion and jewelry from 40 designers. Also on Thursdays and Fridays, it hosts an " alternative therapies fair." The mall is visited by about 40,000 people on weekdays, around 45,000 people on Fridays, and about 80,000 during the holidays.

Towers

Two towers were built upon the mall – a residential tower above the northern part of the mall commonly referred to as the "Dizengoff Tower," and an office tower above the south-western part of the mall commonly referred to as "Top Tower". The mall also has a big underground parking lot. Dizengoff Tower was commissioned by developer Abraham Pilz and Azorim, and designed by the architect Mordechai Ben Horin. The building was inspired by the shape of a rose. It has 21 floors and stands tall. The architect wanted to maximize the perimeter of the building and allow each apartment to have a view in two directions, hence the zig-zag shape. The original design called for 320 small apartments of approximately , but many were combined, for an eventual total of 226. The floor area is . An expansion to the base of the tower was approved in the 2010s, but the plan was rejected following an appeal.

Gallery

File:Dizengoff Center.jpg, Dizengoff Center northern façade File:Dizengoff Center suicide bombing, 1996 I Dan Hadani Archive.jpg, Dizengoff Center after a Suicide Bombing in the area,

1996 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

File:Dizengof Center Tel Aviv.jpg, Dizengoff Center - outside eastern view File:Tel aviv22dc.jpg, Aerial view of the mall and surrounding area File:Disngof-T.jpg, The Dizengoff Tower File:Underground Dizengoff Center.jpg, Dizengoff Center's underground bomb shelters File:Inside Dizengoff Center1.JPG, Inside view of Dizengoff Center

References

External links