What was once an Ottoman-era police station and prison at the edge of ancient Jaffa — its massive kurkar limestone walls and vaulted stone arches having witnessed centuries of the city's turbulent history — became The Setai Tel Aviv when the Miami-based Setai Group undertook its conversion in 2017. The architects preserved the fortified precinct's raw fabric with deliberate restraint, leaving the rough-hewn sandstone arcades intact in the restaurant, where barrel vaults span above contemporary oak tables and leather seating, a brass-slatted room divider the only concession to overt decoration. Guestrooms navigate a different register: travertine floors and Moorish-inflected pendant lanterns beside dark-stained headboard panels upholstered in quilted ivory leather, deep crimson Persian-style rugs anchoring the palette against white plaster walls. The Arabesque detailing in the pendant lights echoes the arched windows set into walls nearly a meter thick, their original stone surrounds left untouched. Above the fortification wall's seaward edge, a long infinity pool extends toward the Mediterranean on a teak-decked terrace, the horizon line of the water barely distinguishable from the sea beyond — a view that places the hotel's 120 rooms squarely between the ancient city behind them and one of the most contested coastlines in the world.

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