Beit Aghion, Official residence in Rehavia, Jerusalem, Israel.
Beit Aghion is a government building at 9 Smolenskin Street in the Rehavia neighborhood, where the Prime Minister of Israel lives and works. The property includes several adjoining blocks with a central stairway and rows of windows facing Balfour Street.
Richard Kauffmann, a German architect, designed the house for Edward Aghion between 1936 and 1938. During the 1948 war it was used as a medical station before being converted into the Foreign Minister's residence in 1952.
The name recalls Edward Aghion, a merchant from Greece who originally commissioned the property for his family. Today the house receives foreign delegations and is used for state occasions.
The house sits at 9 Smolenskin Street, at the corner of Balfour Street. Since the 1990s a security wall has enclosed it, and part of Balfour Street is closed to traffic; in 2013 the adjacent Zalman Shoken House was added to the secured compound and Smolenskin Street was cut in two, its half nearest the residence fenced off. A 312-square-metre, roughly 6-metre-high canopy built in 2017 between the house wall and the Terra Santa College wall must be passed to enter that stretch of Smolenskin Street. The residence itself is not open to visitors.
The inner courtyard, unusual for International Style buildings, was likely added at the Aghion family's request, following a pattern common in Islamic architecture. The house was bought by the state in 1952 for the Foreign Minister; Moshe Sharett was the first senior official to live there, after interior renovations by architects Dora and Yehezkel Gad.
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