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The Terraces of the Bahá'í Faith, also known as the Hanging Gardens of Haifa, are garden terraces that form nine above and nine below the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel within Haifa, Israel. Described as the Eighth Wonder of the World, they are one of the most visited tourist attractions in Israel. The architect is Fariborz Sahba from Iran (now lives in Canada).
The terraces represent the first eighteen disciples of the Báb, who were designated "Letter of the Living" (info.bahai.org), although individual terraces are connected with individual Letters.
Nine concentric circles thus provide the main geometry of the eighteen terraces. Just as the identification of a circle presupposes a centre, so the terraces have been conceived as generated from the Shrine of the Báb. The eighteen terraces plus the one terrace of the Shrine of the Báb make nineteen terraces total. Nineteen is a significant number within both the Bahá'í and Bábí religions.
On July 2008, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee added the Baha'i Shrines and Gardens in Haifa and Acre to the eleven World Heritage Sites in Israel. The resting places of the faith's founding fathers Baha'u'llah and the Bab, they represent the first World Heritage sites connected with a religious tradition born in modern times. The elaborate landscaped gardens and shrines are a site of annual pilgrimage, not only for the 5 million-strong Baha'i faithful, but also for hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world.