Haifa

Carmel was a holy mountain long before Haifa was a city. The book of Kings sets on it the contest in which Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to call down fire on a sacrifice and, when nothing happens, mocks them for serving a god who may be asleep or travelling. Whatever its historical kernel, the story fixed the mountain in Jewish and Christian memory as the place where a competition between gods was decided in public.

A cave at the foot of the promontory is venerated as Elijah's, and it is visited by Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze, each with their own account of who he was; in Muslim tradition he is associated with al-Khidr, the green one, and in Druze belief he holds a particular place. The cave is one of the few sites in the region used by four communities without a formal division of it.

In about 1200 a group of Latin hermits living on the mountain asked the patriarch of Jerusalem for a rule, and received a short text that became the Rule of Saint Albert. They took their name from the mountain, and when the crusader states fell they carried the Carmelite order to Europe, where it produced Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. A monastery, Stella Maris, stands on the headland today. Druze villages on the Carmel ridge above the city are among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements of that community in the country.

The Bab was executed by firing squad in Tabriz in 1850, and his remains were hidden and moved from place to place for half a century by Babis and then Bahais who feared their destruction. They were finally brought to Palestine and interred on the slope of Mount Carmel in 1909, at a spot Bahaullah had pointed out during a visit from Acre. A stone superstructure and a golden dome were added in the 1950s.

Around that shrine the Bahai Faith built its administrative centre, which is unusual because the religion has no clergy at all. Authority rests in elected bodies: local and national assemblies chosen without nomination or campaigning, and above them the Universal House of Justice, first elected in 1963 and seated in a colonnaded building on the arc of terraced gardens above the shrine. The other institutions of the world centre, an archive, a research centre and a training institute, stand on the same arc.

Nineteen terraces of gardens, opened in 2001, run from the foot of the mountain to the summit, and they are the most visible thing in Haifa. Bahais come on a nine day pilgrimage by appointment, visiting the shrines here and at Bahji near Acre. By long standing policy the community does not teach its faith within Israel, out of respect for the country's religious communities, so the world centre is administrative and devotional rather than missionary. The properties were inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2008.