Israel · Central District
Where to Stay in Ra'anana, Central District
Ra'anana was founded in 1922. The city stands on the southern Sharon Plain, between Herzliya on the west and Kfar Saba on the east.
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Where to stay in Ra'anana
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Two boundaries define the choice. Herzliya lies to the west and Kfar Saba to the east, and a stay in Ra'anana is effectively a stay within reach of both, since the city occupies the ground between them on the southern Sharon Plain. Distances within Ra'anana hardly register.
At roughly fifteen square kilometres there is not much city to cross, so the practical question is which neighbour a visitor means to spend the day in. Karnei Oren Memorial Field is the commemorative ground on Ra'anana's list, and a stay near it is a different proposition from one on the Herzliya side. Herzliya answers most cultural itineraries, with the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Herzliya Cinematheque and the Civilization Museum in Herzliya all inside a short run of a Ra'anana bed.
Sportek Herzliya sits on the same western side. Kfar Saba answers the rest. Its museum is the nearest collection on the eastern side, and the Metro-West sports hall appears on both cities' lists.
Tabsur is the name behind the site. Ra'anana was laid out about a kilometre south of that village in 1922, and the settlement it grew from was an American-Jewish one.
About Ra'anana
Culture here is borrowed from the west.
What is Ra'anana known for?
The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Herzliya Cinematheque and the Civilization Museum in Herzliya all sit within the short reach that the boundary with Herzliya allows, and Ra'anana's own list runs to sport and commemoration instead. Karnei Oren Memorial Field holds the second of those. Metro-West sports hall and Sportek Herzliya take care of the first, and the Kfar-Saba Museum closes the circuit on the eastern side.
What are the main landmarks in Ra'anana?
Most of the list belongs to the neighbours. The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Herzliya Cinematheque, the Civilization Museum in Herzliya and Sportek Herzliya are all recorded within reach of Ra'anana without standing inside it, and the Kfar-Saba Museum does the same from the east. Two entries stay closer.
Karnei Oren Memorial Field and the Metro-West sports hall are what the city itself puts on the register.
What is the history of Ra'anana?
The founding year is 1922. Ra'anana began as an American-Jewish settlement in that year, laid out about a kilometre south of the village of Tabsur, and the association with Tabsur is the oldest thing the record attaches to the site. World War I had passed through four years earlier.
An important battle was fought at Tabsur then, which places the beginnings of the modern town in the aftermath of that war rather than in any older continuity. Growth took the space between two towns. Herzliya closed the western side and Kfar Saba the eastern, which left Ra'anana with the ground in the middle of the southern Sharon Plain and about fifteen square kilometres to fill.
Tel Aviv lies south. Sportek Herzliya and the Civilization Museum in Herzliya sit on the same shared register, close enough to Ra'anana to be counted with it. The institutions the city shares with its neighbours, the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Herzliya Cinematheque, the Kfar-Saba Museum, belong to that arrangement, and Karnei Oren Memorial Field and the Metro-West sports hall are the entries Ra'anana added on its own account.
Where is Ra'anana?
The southern Sharon Plain carries the city. Ra'anana holds about fifteen square kilometres of it, with Herzliya against the western boundary, Kfar Saba against the eastern and Tel Aviv further south. Tabsur named the ground first.
The 1922 settlement went in about a kilometre south of that village, which is as much distance as the plain here puts between one named place and the next.
What is the climate of Ra'anana?
One plain, one pattern. Ra'anana keeps to the subtropical year of the southern Sharon Plain, a long dry summer and a mild winter that carries almost all of the year's rain in a short season. Autumn is the turn.
Herzliya to the west and Kfar Saba to the east record the same year, which is what a belt of towns on one plain produces.
How do you get to Ra'anana?
Ra'anana is reached from either side. Herzliya lies west and Kfar Saba east, and the approach from either crosses a boundary rather than a distance, which is what a position in the middle of the southern Sharon Plain amounts to. Tel Aviv is the longer run, from the south.
Anyone arriving for the Herzliya Cinematheque or the Kfar-Saba Museum will be leaving the city again within minutes of settling in.
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Updated August 2026