page_title: Florentin, Tel Aviv
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Florentin, Tel Aviv / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Florentine quarter, Tel Aviv, Cities in Israel עברית: שכונת פלורנטין, תל אביב, Original Image Name:שכונת פלורנטין, תל אביב, Location:שכונת פלורנטין, תל אביב
context_page_description: Florentin is a neighborhood in the southern part of Tel Aviv, Israel, named for Solomon 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.
  Florentin was initially populated primarily by poor Sephardic Jewish immigrants from North Africa, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and Bukhara. As with much of Southern Tel Aviv, for many decades the area has suffered from urban decay and poverty. By the 1960s, the area had declined from a working class area, to becoming a slum, as the original Florentin residents moved out. However, since the 1990s and 2000s, the area has also attracted many younger residents and artists who were first attracted by its lower-rents, and the neighborhood is now also associated with a bohemian life style. Florentin now has numerous artists' workshops, cafes, restaurants, markets and graffiti tours. The area is also an industrial zone and a garment district, where both Jewish and Arab wholesalers buy and sell clothing and furniture.
context_section_description: The 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 , compounding the effects of the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 in which the city's Jewish quarter was destroyed, along with 12,000 homes, leaving over 70,000 homeless people.  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. 
  Florentin was initially populated primarily by Jewish immigrants from North Africa, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bukhara. For many years, it was a low-income neighbourhood, suffering from urban decay. By the 1960s, the area had declined from working class, to becoming a slum. The original Florentin residents moved out, and it had become a home for the city's poorest residents and a flophouse for illegal workers, mainly from Gaza. 
  By the 1990s, many of the original buildings were semi-derelict. However, since the 1990s and 2000s, with the opening of many artists' workshops, and the decline of the traditional garment and furniture purchasing industries that had once sustained the area, it has become increasingly popular with artists and bohemians, who flocked to the area for its lower-rents. 
  Florentin was the setting for a TV series in the broadcast between 1997-2001 called Florentin. The series helped to raise awareness of the existence of the neighborhood and to establish the previously neglected neighborhood in the Tel Aviv consciousness.
  In the 2010s, Florentin now has numerous cafes, bars and graffiti tours.  Today, the area is still also an industrial zone and a garment district, where both Jewish and Arab wholesalers buy and sell clothing and furniture.
caption: Outdoor cafe and graffiti in Florentin
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