Russian immigrants Menachem and Malka Elkonin arrived in the newly founded Jewish settlement of Tel Aviv in the early 1900s, drawn by the community’s mission to build a haven free from the discrimination they’d known in Europe. Rather than move on, the couple settled permanently and, in 1913, opened what became the city’s first hotel, part of their own residence in the fledgling Neve Tzedek neighborhood.
It quickly drew a notable guest list, including Albert Einstein and David Ben-Gurion, who would go on to sign Israel’s declaration of independence just a few hundred meters away. After World War II, new owners converted the building into workshops and warehouses, a decision that sent it into decades of decline; by the 1980s it stood completely abandoned. Franco-Israeli entrepreneur Dominique Romano bought the property in 2004 with an eye toward restoring it, and after years of work, the Elkonin reopened as a 44-room hotel in 2023.