Since I saw a picture of Bahai Gardens on the internet, I wanted to visit this place. I didn’t know anything about the Bahai faith, so walking around this breathtaking garden in Haifa and discovering that there’s a religion that I never heard about, was a lot surprising.
The whole garden has more than 200,00 square meters and it’s full of plants, trees, gravel paths, and fountains. It costs millions of dollars to be built and all the money come from the followers of Bahai religion.
In 2008, the Bahai Gardens entered to UNESCOs World Heritage list. It’s located in the Mount Carmel, Haifa, around 93 kilometers from Tel Aviv and I really recommend the visit!
The garden
The Bahai Gardens was designed to fill your eyes with beauty. The colors, the symmetry design and the sea view from the top are really made to inspire! Everything in the garden is symbolic and represents the tenets of Bahai faith. The unity of all religions, the unity of all humanity and the unity of God’s creation, those are some of the tenets that are represented in circles, triangles, squares, rectangles and also some kind of mandalas.
The garden contains species from all over the world in order to represent the diversity of humanity also the unity of man and nature.
One of the most amazing things in the garden, besides the beauty, of course, is the stairs. They come from the bottom to the top of the garden and have 999 marble steps. If you’re thinking to work out your calves and booty a bit, it’s an excellent opportunity!
Visitors can explore the garden freely and have a tour with absolutely any cost! There’s just one part of the garden that you can’t visit. It’s a kind of temple, that reminds me of a lot of the Greek architecture. Inside this place, there are objects that belonged to the founders of Bahai faith.
The garden is impressive. I’ve been in Versailles, and in my opinion, nothing compares to Bahai Garden.
The walks can be very pleasant and meditative too. There’s silence, water sounds, and peace all around.
The Bahai faith
The Bahai faith appeared in Persia around 160 years ago. Basically, they preached equality among man. The founder (Ali Muhammed Shirazi, also known as Bab) was persecuted, arrested and executed because he denied Mohamed as the only prophet.
One of his followers, Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri, who became the Bahaullah, continues to call people to join the Bahai faith. He was also arrested and spend more than 11 years in prison in Akko. After he passed away, he ordered his son to bury the remains of the founder Bab, at Mount Carmel. Bab’s remains are today in the golden-domed shrine located in the bottom of the garden.
Nowadays the followers of Bahai faith are around 6 million worldwide. Every year the follower’s pilgrim from all over the world to visit and cultivate the garden. If you want to become a Bahai, all you need to do is fill a form out an online form and be accepted. If you want to become a Bahai, however, you cannot live in Israel, since for the Bahais this is the holy land and a place to pilgrim only.
Haifa: where all religions can coexist
Haifa, where the Bahai Gardens is located, is also known as a multi-religious city, or a place where all the religions can coexist. I’m not a religious person, but being in a place like that make me think how humanity should be if God didn’t have so many different names…
No matter which God do you believe, and even if you don’t believe in anything, the visit to Bahai Gardens can be very inspiring and full of new discoveries.
(Haifa, Israel, 2017)
