Off the beaten track in Nazareth

Those aren't the only complaints people here have, and they'll be happy to fill you in if you ask. Topping the list is the government's neglect of the town and its potential, part of a more general government disregard for the one-fifth of Israelis who are Arabs. Some might mention tensions between the Muslim majority and the one-third of the town's 65,000 people who are Christian. The two communities have sparred in the past, though today there is scant evidence of real conflict.

For a peek into Nazareth's ancient history, it turns out the place to visit is not a museum but a gift shop. The store, Cactus, became an archaeological site accidentally, when its owners undertook a renovation in the early 1990s and happened to discover an immense Roman bathhouse from the time of Jesus.

Martina and Elias Shama have since incorporated the ruins into their shop, and visitors can go underneath the floor to the arched basement where slaves stoked the fires that heated the rooms above. Ceramic pipes installed by ancient plumbers are still visible in the walls.

The bathhouse has helped revise the accepted view of what Nazareth was at the time of Jesus: A town with a grand public bath would have been a large urban center, not the poor backwater of popular imagination.

As evening approaches, you might be looking for another place to eat.

Those in a laid-back frame of mind would be advised to check out the ElReda, on the ground floor of another Ottoman mansion. The decor is heavy on wood and old photographs of mustachioed merchants, the menu includes fresh local produce and the soundtrack never changes: from 8 o'clock until closing time at 2 a.m. or so you will hear nothing but the ballads of the Egyptian diva Umm Kalthoum. That's the long-standing rule decreed by the owner, Daher Zeidani, a professorial type with glasses hanging on a string around his neck.

"You can listen to other music during the day, but after you hear Umm Kalthoum you can't hear anyone else. That's why you finish the day with Umm Kalthoum," he explained.

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A taste of the younger Nazareth scene can be had not far away at Dandana, opened in 2006 by Fadi Saba, 31, and his twin brothers, Shadi and Rami, 27. Dandana serves European-style food and alcohol, and some nights the Sabas push the tables aside, bring a DJ, crank up the Arabic pop music and dance.

The Sabas say they are well-enough known around town that Nazareth daughters put them on the phone to calm parents worried about curfew infractions. "We tell the parents 'don't worry, they're in good hands,'" Fadi Saba said.

At the bar, the brothers said, you might meet local celebrities like soccer players or the members of Chaos, Nazareth's contribution to Israel's heavy metal scene. The band's MySpace page says the band started as "four friends from Nazareth" and identifies its style as "melodic death metal."

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The town's young people are increasingly liberal, with young women far more likely to go out at night dressed to kill than they were a decade ago, Saba said. There are conservatives in the town, including Muslims who oppose drinking alcohol, he said, but they largely "keep it to themselves." There's no better place in northern Israel to spend an evening, he said, but acknowledged word was slow getting out.

"Take someone from New York or from Germany, and they'll only know Nazareth from the Bible — they think people over here are still riding donkeys," he said.

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