Be'er Sheva also spelled Beersheba, Hebrew באר שבע is a desert city of approximately 200,000 inhabitants in southern Israel. It is the sixth largest city in the country and is very much the gateway to the Negev region of Israel. The city is spread out by Israeli standards, as there is no shortage of land in the desert, and there isn't much of a downtown, except for a few streets in the old Turkish quarter. While Beer Sheva is mostly middle class, it does have three wealthy satellite suburbs with manicured landscapes, private villas and a Palm Springs feel to them: Omer, Metar and Lehavim. A few Bedouin villages surround the city as well. Some feature tribal attractions which are worth a visit, including Rahat, Tel Sheva, Hura and Laqiya. In Beer Sheva itself, some modern/experimental architecture was built in the 1960s. Today, this is found mostly in government and public buildings, including the Ben Gurion University and Soroka Hospital buildings.
