Florentin, Tel Aviv 5.07

Florentin is a neighborhood in the southern part of Tel Aviv, Israel, named for David Florentin, a Greek Jew who purchased the land in the late 1920s. Development of the area was spurred by its proximity to the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway. As with much of Southern Tel Aviv, for many decades the area suffered from urban decay and poverty. However, today most of the residents are young and the neighborhood is often associated with a bohemian life style. Florentin is now becoming known as a hip, "cool" place to be in Tel Aviv with coffeehouses, markets, bars, galleries and parties.HistoryThe land was purchased in the 1920s by the Salonika-Palestine Investment Company, founded in 1921 by Jews in Salonika to develop commercial relations with Jewish settlements in Palestine. After World War I, anti-Semitism in Greece reared its head, compounding the effects of the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 in which the city's Jewish quarter was destroyed, leaving over 53,000 Jews homeless. In 1924, the Salonika-Palestine Company sent an envoy to Palestine to purchase land in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv's Rehov Herzl, in an area bordering Neveh Tzedek and Ahuzat Bayit that was close to the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad. Due to Ottoman land laws, building in the area was held up until 1933.