Bethlehem — بيت لحم
Bethlehem sits on a hilltop in the Judean highlands, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. When Bonfils photographed it in the 1870s, it was a thriving Palestinian town of stone houses, olive groves and busy markets. The crowded marketplace scene he captured is one of the most remarkable photographs in the entire collection — hundreds of Palestinians going about their daily lives, a moment frozen in time.
Hebron — الخليل
Hebron — Al-Khalil in Arabic — is one of the oldest cities in the world and one of the most sacred in Palestine. Nestled among terraced hills covered in olive groves, Bonfils captured it from a hilltop, the city spreading across the valley below, its minarets rising above the ancient stone houses.
Jericho — أريحا
Jericho — the oldest city on earth — sits in the Jordan Valley, ringed by the dramatic cliffs of the Judean Desert. Bonfils captured Palestinian herders with their cattle against the vast timeless backdrop of the desert hills — a scene unchanged for millennia.
Jerusalem — Holy Sites
Beyond the city walls of Jerusalem lie some of the most sacred sites in the world. Bonfils documented these holy sites with the same careful eye he brought to the streets and markets of Palestine — capturing not just their spiritual significance, but their physical reality as living places embedded in a Palestinian landscape.
These are not archives. They are invitations — to see a Palestine that was, and still is, a place of extraordinary beauty.