About the project
The Herzl Museum was built in 1960 near the entrance to Mount Herzl, Israel’s national military cemetery, where Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, is buried. Over the years, the museum’s facilities and interpretive approach, which relied primarily on a reconstruction of Herzl’s Vienna drawing room, had become outdated. The Jerusalem Foundation supported the redevelopment, renovation and reopening of the museum as an interactive museum and institute for Zionist education in 2005. The new museum tells the story of Theodore Herzl and presents Zionism as an ideology indispensable to the future of the Jewish people. The new interpretive approach, which was developed by Orit Shaham-Gover, is presented in an hour-long audiovisual program that provides a glimpse into Herzl’s analysis of the Jewish condition, a portrayal of his ambitions, vision, disappointments and achievements, and the challenge of his legacy. The museum also offers seminars, workshops and walking tours. The museum is operated by the World Zionist Organization, founded by Herzl at the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897.
