The Bahai holy places in Haifa and Acre are administered from the Bahai World Centre, and pilgrimage to them is arranged only by application, allocated in turn, and lasts nine days.
The Shrine of the Bab stands on the northern slope of Mount Carmel with nineteen garden terraces running up the hillside through it, nine below and nine above, completed in 2001 and now the most photographed feature of Haifa. Around it on the Arc sit the administrative buildings of the faith, including the seat of the Universal House of Justice.
The Shrine of Bahaullah at Bahji outside Acre is the more significant of the two in practice, because it is the qiblih: Bahais face it during obligatory prayer, wherever they are. Beside it stands the mansion where Bahaullah spent his last years, after decades of imprisonment and confinement, and in Acre itself the cell in the citadel where he was held. The Ridvan Garden outside the city is where he stayed during periods of relative freedom, and the festival of Ridvan is named for a different garden, in Baghdad.
The whole ensemble was inscribed by UNESCO in 2008, the first modern religious tradition to have its holy places listed.
Two points of doctrine are worth recording. The Kitab i Aqdas prescribes pilgrimage to two houses, the House of the Bab in Shiraz and the House of Bahaullah in Baghdad, and states the obligation as resting on men, women being exempted. Neither house is accessible: the Shiraz house was demolished and the Baghdad house has also been lost. So the prescribed pilgrimage cannot be made, and what is made instead is a visitation to the shrines, which is a different act with a different status.
The gardens themselves are open free to anyone.