Florentin is a neighborhood in the southern part of Tel Aviv, Israel, named for Solomon Florentin, a GreekJew 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 south Tel Aviv, for many decades it suffered from urban decay and poverty. By the 1960s, the area had declined from a working-class area to a slum, as the original residents moved out. However, since the 1990s and 2000s, the area has attracted many younger residents and artists who were first attracted by its lower rents, and the neighborhood is now also associated with a bohemian lifestyle. 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.
In 1933, the Jaffa Municipality allowed shops and light industries to be opened on the ground floors of the new residential buildings, providing a source of income for the wave of immigrants settling in Palestine at the time. Today it is a combination of industrial zone, garment district, marketplace, and assembly point for foreign workers looking for jobs. An urban renewal campaign sponsored by the Tel Aviv municipality in the 1990s led to a revival of the area, which has become a popular night spot.
The area is known for its vibrant local art scene. The mix of garages and abandoned buildings attracted the wave of a bohemian community and opening of many workshops in the 1990s. Artists were attracted to and used the areas’ crumbling walls as a canvas for murals. Street art in Florentin often has strong political message. Local political conflicts between rival political groups have also taken place through graffiti battles on the walls of the neighbourhood. Much of the graffiti is merely in text form, involving quotes of Hebrew poets, religious passages, and the dialogues taking place between various graffiti artists. The graffiti has also brought opposition from local residents, and concerns about the declining standards of the graffiti itself as the area becomes more mainstream. Street artists like Dede, Klone and Kis-Lev, and installation artists such as Sigalit Landau, made the working class neighborhood their home base. Famous works include a ’27 Club’ mural (27 Club graffiti in Tel Aviv) and a controversial depiction of Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination.
