Herod’s tomb will be restored and will rise to a height of 75 feet, the Einstein Museum will be built in the shape of the great scientist’s brain, and all of Israel’s heritage sites will be linked to the Waze navigation app (a free social GPS application featuring turn-by-turn navigation, developed by the Israeli start-up Waze Mobile for mobile phones) and marked in Google maps. These are some projects prepared by the Prime Minister’s Office, as part of the program to enhance national heritage sites.
Cabinet Secretary Attorney Zvi Hauser summarized at a Monday press conference the three years in which these plans, rebranded “landmarks.”
At the Herodion National Park, south of Jerusalem, the remains of King Herod’s tomb will be restored tomb at a cost of about $500 thousand.
The Herodion restoration is one of 300 projects in the heritage plan initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which Hauser executed. Projects budgeted at $95 million, and doubled through private matching funds. The program will be spread over seven years, and Netanyahu intends to extend it should he be reelected.
Eight out of the 300 projects have already been carried out: upgrading Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, restoring the windmill in Mishkenot Sha’ananim, rehabilitating the gravesite of President Yitzhak Ben Zvi in Givat Shaul, Jerusalem, and renovation of the moat around David’s Tower’s in the Old City. Another program was “pick up the pieces,” which gathered 60 thousand personal items from the Holocaust, and the program “Israel comes into view,” which included collecting images of the country from private picture albums and uploading to the Internet.
Israel’s pin on Google maps will be the Tzabar cactus plant.
