Israeli Diamond Industry Museum

The Diamond Museum, attached to the Netanya offices of the Israeli Diamond Exchange, tells the story of how a small Mediterranean town became a global centre of diamond polishing. Exhibits cover the geology, the cutting techniques, the trade, and the role of the industry in the early Israeli economy.

The museum is small and rarely crowded. Free guided tours of the cutting workshops are offered to visitors who arrange ahead. The site is in the southern industrial part of town, not on most tourist routes — a short taxi ride from the centre.

things to do museum
A story
Netanya became the centre of Israel's diamond-cutting industry in the 1930s and 1940s when Jewish diamond cutters fleeing Antwerp and Amsterdam during the Second World War settled here in large numbers. At its peak the city had hundreds of small workshops; today most have consolidated into the large exchanges, but the industry still anchors the local economy.