Rockefeller Museum was formerly known as the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Located in East Jerusalem, the Arab quarters, it has the largest collection in Israel ancient artifacts.

The emergence of such a museum in British Mandate Palestine, established at the end of the First World, it was inevitable: the British School of Archaeology has undertaken extensive excavations of the Holy Land, rich monuments of many civilizations. In the same direction worked the Jewish National Fund, was engaged in the purchase of land for the resettlement of Jews coming to Palestine. In 1906, the Fund began to negotiate the purchase of the future museum of the land in the north-east of the old town.

Britain supported the idea, and even introduced in 1924, a special tourist tax for the development of the project. But it became a reality only when the American philanthropist and billionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated him two million dollars - an incredible amount for the end of the twenties of the XX century.

The building designed by British architect Austin Harrison. He organically combined the eastern and western architecture, cleverly used the local white limestone. Its appearance the building resembles a European castle with a central tower, but the doors and windows, arcades patio - certainly of eastern origin.

For public museum was opened in 1938. After Israel's War of Independence in 1948 he found himself in the territory controlled by Jordan. In 1967, during the Six Day War, the building fell into the epicenter of bitter fighting, the tower was an observation post of the Israeli paratroopers.

Now the museum's collection includes thousands of exhibits covering a period of two million years. Most of the exposition is formed of the findings of the twenties and thirties of the last century found in Jerusalem, Megiddo, Jericho, Samaria. This statues, sarcophagi, weapons, mosaics, coins, jewelry, ceramics - from prehistoric times and ending with the Ottoman period (until 1917). One of the most valuable pieces - carved wooden panels of Al-Aqsa Mosque (VIII century). In the VI century mosaic floor of the synagogue at Ein Gedi - a curse to those who "neglects his family, provokes conflicts, stealing property, slandering reveals secrets of friends or balm Ein Gedi." A unique exhibit - a letter to the military in the ancient Hebrew, referring to the period of the Babylonian invasion (VI century BC. E.).

Impressive interiors and architectural decoration of the building. Specially manufactured in England, the massive doors of the Turkish walnut weigh three quarters of a ton each. The courtyard bordered by graceful arches, reminiscent of the Alhambra Castle in Granada Spain. Bas work of British sculptor Eric Gill placed on the inner walls of the courtyard, devoted to the peoples who inhabited in different centuries the Holy Land from the Turks to hananeytsev. The floors of exhibition halls to the British carefully lined cork, muted sound of footsteps.