Why Marseille is the European Hidden Gem You Need to Visit
For years, the glamorous south of France had a dirty secret – but not anymore. Today, once-gritty Marseille has found its place in the sun.
“Such a powerful landscape,” my friend Guillaume sighs as we sit crab-like on a limestone outcrop above emerald Malmousque Bay, drying in the hot sun between swims. Behind us, Marseille rises in an untidily beautiful arrangement of pastel villas, cottages, apartment blocks and even a rest house for Foreign Legionnaires. In front of us, the mirage-like shimmer of the Frioul archipelago and Château d’If, a former prison island that was, in the early 16th century, briefly home to a velvet-collared rhinoceros (in transit to the Vatican, a gift from the King of Portugal). In Marseille, anything feels possible.
France’s second city is a labyrinth; a swirling maze of streets, alleys and stairways etched into a rugged coastline shaped like a natural amphitheatre. Its residents live stacked on top of each other, all craning for a glimpse of the Mediterranean – the life force of the Marseillais.
Post-swim, we wander back along Chemin du Génie (The Way of the Genie) to discover a neighbourhood garage has morphed into a bar. We grab two Cagole beers, take a seat on the kerb in the scented shade of oleanders and pines, and shoot the breeze as beachgoers of all ages and colours head home.
Like many Parisians, Guillaume is a recent convert to the charms of Marseille. Long stereotyped as gritty, the city’s fortunes got a major boost with the début of the TGV high-speed train in 2001 and a major makeover ahead of its star turn as European Capital of Culture in 2013. Now just a few easy hours from Paris, Marseille’s climate, culture and lower costs have lured new blood and ideas from across France and Europe.
“What’s changed is the appreciation of the city,” explains writer and guide Alexis Steinman. “Lots of Parisians have moved here. Why this city has a lot of energy is that juxtaposition of being very working-class but also lots of money coming in.”
Most visitors arrive at Saint-Charles railway station, the terminus for both the TGV and the airport-city shuttle. It’s worth pausing here for a moment to admire the monumental staircase that leads down to La Canebière, Marseille’s slightly shabby answer to the Champs-Élysées. Ornate sculptures depict the city’s foundation by Greek sailors around 600BCE and its later incarnations as Gateway to the Orient and an unlikely capital of Provence. Majestic and pedestrian, the staircase is Marseille in a single monument.
From the bottom of the stairs it’s a short walk to Boulevard de la Libération, a once-bourgeois strip now lined with antique shops, art galleries and restaurants serving food from India, Lebanon, Mexico, Greece and Syria. Marseille is France’s most diverse city, the rewards on full display in the nearby market district of Noailles where shopfronts sell everything from Corsican chestnut jam to Madagascan pepper. Wandering its streets I smell cumin and cloves and baked snacks from Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria. At mother-and-son-run Charly Pizza (24 rue des Feuillants; +33 4 91 54 08 83), a staple since 1962, the lines are three deep as locals queue for a moit-moit, half anchovy, half cheese.
Revival and integration are recurring themes around here. Algerian-born architect Rudy Ricciotti’s starkly elegant Museum of Civilisations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM) marries a 17th century fortress with a Modernist cube shrouded in mashrabiya-style lattice. It captures both the city’s North African soul and its seamless embrace of past and future.
My friend Elise remembers the Vieux-Port (Old Port) of her childhood as an unfriendly snarl of traffic with just one pedestrian strip. Today it’s the de facto town square and a thriving waterfront anchored by Norman Foster’s mirrored steel Ombrière canopy at central Quai des Belges, which reflects the luminous charm of what is one of Europe’s loveliest natural harbours.
Vieux-Port is the city’s origin story, the historic gateway through which riches and people poured in. But the modern spirit of Marseille is found along its seafront boulevard, the Corniche du Président John F. Kennedy. From the Old Port this coastal road threads its way along limestone cliffs via chateaux and palaces, beaches and bays with evocative names (False Money Bay, Prophet’s Beach), private swimming clubs, fashionable restaurants, a racecourse and even, at the Prado Beach roundabout, a full-sized replica of Michelangelo’s David.
The Corniche is the prestige place to stay, either mainstream at the Sofitel Vieux Port, where half the rooms have harbour views, or at Les Bords de Mer, a stunning small hotel anchored on rocks directly above the ocean.
The coast road continues south to the Calanques National Park, the striking natural playground of rocky fjords where the Marseillais spend their summers sprawled on pebbly shores or on yachts and power boats anchored in the warm Mediterranean waters.
Ideally, if I’ve spent a day in the Calanques it ends with dinner in the village of Les Goudes, where fishermen’s cottages share the waterfront with seafood restaurants, such as Le Grand Bar. I like to arrive at sunset when the limestone land glows pink and the narrow streets fill with the tanned and happy.
Inside the cramped restaurant the mood is excitable and loud as whole crabs and hearty bowls of bourride seafood stew sail across the room en route to tables. Grand Bar’s staff recite specials in delicious detail, tantalising with their descriptions of how the seafood is cooked, sauced and served. To drink, a Provençal rosé is always the correct choice.
Driving home afterwards along the Corniche, the Bee Gees blaring on the radio and windows open to the salt air, the sounds and carnival colours of a hot summer’s night, Marseille feels, as always, wonderfully alive.
Image credit: Joann Pai
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