Нахария

Nahariya — the register's "Naharija", flagged for canonical spelling — is the town the yekkes built. Founded in 1935 by German-Jewish immigrants who intended to farm and soon discovered hospitality paid better, Israel's northernmost coastal city took its name from the stream, the Ga'aton, that runs down the middle of its main boulevard between double rows of eucalyptus — a piece of urban design so pleasant it made the town's fortune: by the 1950s Nahariya was the country's honeymoon capital, its pensions and cafés a byword for Central European order transplanted to the Mediterranean, strudel served with sea view.

The resort matured into a genial northern city — beaches with the Galilee hills behind, the Byzantine mosaics of nearby churches, Rosh HaNikra's white grottoes up the coast at the Lebanese border — and its cultural life keeps the human scale the concert record describes: chamber concerts, school and amateur ensembles, festival visits, the municipal auditorium and the town's choirs carrying a tradition in which music-making is a neighbourly craft rather than an industry. The founders would recognise the recipe — diligence, greenery, coffee and cake at four — and the stream still runs down the boulevard, which is all the town ever promised. Nahariya keeps its word.