Remez Garden

The story

Remez Garden, also called Ha-Atzmaut Garden, is a rectangular garden of about seven and a half dunams in the Old City of Beersheba, adjoining the Great Mosque, between Ha-Atzmaut, Assaf Simhoni and Hadassah streets. It is named after David Remez, the first Minister of Transport in the government of Israel and later Minister of Education and Culture, and it is among the veteran gardens in the country. This ground was a hospital before it was a garden: in 1917 the Austrian hospital stood here, which served Austrian and German soldiers who fought alongside the Ottoman army, and after the British entered Bir a-Saba the place served as a field hospital for the ANZAC soldiers who fought in the Battle of Beersheba. Over the years there were play facilities for children in the garden, which disappeared with time, and many events were held in it; in 1997 a ceramics biennale was held in it in which ceramic sculptures were displayed. In the renovation works of 2016 a well thirty-five meters deep was found at the center of the garden, well preserved; it was covered with a casing of glass and metal, and it is possible to look into its depth. The renovation was done by the firm “Tal Bilinsky Architecture and Landscape”, and the garden was rededicated in 2017, with a water element at its center. In 2021 sculptures by well-known artists were placed in the garden: “Revival (the Horseman)” by Ahmad Canaan, an untitled work by Bernie Fink, “Wheat in Berlin” by Ilan Averbuch, three basalt works by Shlomo Selinger — “Thirty-Six Righteous Men”, “Life” and “The Prisoner” — “Bougainvillea” by Dov Heller, “Facing My Father (A Game of Chess)” by Zvi Lachman, “Bicycle to the Sky” by Assaf Lifshitz, and “A Flower and Two Leaves” by Noam Rabinovich.

• 1917
• Water and wells
• Public art
• Beersheba