Marseilles

Marseilles

10th October

Marseilles was not what I expected. I suppose its reputation for crime, drug trafficking, and image as a slightly seedy, raffish port had me thinking it would be somewhere that you would not want to wander off the tourist trail, and you would make sure, as you sat relaxing in a cafe, that you kept one foot firmly planted on your day-sack strap in anticipation of marauding sneak thieves.

Marseilles is not at all like this. Firstly it's setting came as a complete surprise. The bay of Naples is justly famous as one of the great sites of the Mediterranean. However, Marseilles almost matches it in terms of dramatic setting. The bus journey from Cassis wends its way through a landscape of dramatic limestone gorges and an arid plateau of scrubby garrigue. Then suddenly the bus rounds a hairpin bend and stretched in front of you is the bay of Marseilles with Les Iles, of Chateau d' If fame, a white limestone slab gleaming in the deep blue sea. The city itself stretches in an arc around the shoreline. In the distance - the ochre coloured buildings of the old town, just beneath you-  the newer suburbs, a mixture of villas in pinewoods and high rise public housing projects. Some of the pure white concrete towers have been placed dramatically on the top of rocky outcrops. No subtle understatement here or sensitivity towards heritage; modernity is enthusiastically embraced, and celebrated.

And why not! After all, as the bus trundles slowly down Avenue du Prado towards the city centre you are confronted by the unmistakable profile of le Corbusier's landmark apartment block, 'Unité d'Habitation'. Built in the early 1950s it became the inspiration for city planners across the West who took to constructing high rise developments as a way of dealing with the post war housing crisis. It's not just the concept of the Marseilles block that was influential, its style became fashionable too, instead of being a smooth white slab of concrete and glass, like the then prevailing International Style, Unité d'Habitation uses concrete's sculptural qualities to mould more dramatic shapes - rough, unfinished surfaces are preferred to smooth white finishes. The raw quality of the buildings that emulated the look became known as Brutalist, and can be seen in many buildings erected in the style from the mid 60s until the 1980s. It is these buildings particularly that prompted Prince Charles to start harping on about 'carbuncles'. I have a sneaking liking for them, partly because I admire their scale, ambition and their inherent optimism about the future, and partly because anything that annoys our jug-eared future monarch can't be all bad in my book.

A glimpse of Unite d'' Habitation

Oh, yes back to Marseilles - sorry about the pro-Brutalist aside,,, The bus deposits you at Place Castellane next to a large monument called, unsurprisingly, Fountaine Castellane. Completed in 1911, it celebrates Marseilles relationship with the sea.. I was interested to see that amongst the bland stereotypical classical facial types, the sculptor also included a black African face - unusual back in the Belle Epoque era, reflecting I suppose Marseilles' position as a southern gateway connecting Europe to Africa and the Orient.

Place Castellane

Once we got our bearings, and negotiated a few streets made semi-impassable by major sewer renewal work we arrived at the old harbour area, which is huge. Basically we wandered up the 'rive gauche' crossed the harbour on the free ferry, then returned down the other side, exploring the old city on the way. It was a fair old hike and took around six hours. I've annotated the photographs below to try to give a sense of the place.

A small square outside the Palais du Justice, I think, or maybe the Tribunal of Commerce, it had sculptures of Poseidon on top of it anyway.

A bathescope straight out of Jules Verne - this area was influential in developing modern diving systems, I think, Jacque Cousteau, The Calypso and all that.

Publicite Velos, not for the faint hearted amid the city traffic.

I just liked this gloomy old alley.

Fortified abbey founded by St Cassian & built over the 5th-century crypt housing his sarcophagus. - Google

Well, if Google says so, I'm not going to argue, like a lot of churches in South West France - Narbonne, Bezier - this ecclesiastical building had a distinctly military look. When you think of the carnage surrounding the Albigensian heresy, I don't suppose the the martial aspect is so surprising.

Gill's Moto smart-phone has a panorama function...nice one Gill!

Fort St Nicolas protecting the eastern side of the old harbour

The Parc du Pharo contains a palace once used by Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. It is now used as a European conference centre. There was some conference or other of the French equivalent of the BMA. We felt very scruffy in our khaki shorts amongst the suited, stilettoed and lanyarded delegates who had been 'let out' after lunch to 'network and cascade'. It was not so very long ago that we both inhabited the world of consultation, policy development and knowledge exchange. My Linkedin site still presents me in such a light, I played the game and wore the uniform...well actually I stuck to the suit, I don't  feel I have the legs for stilettos.

I don't miss any of it, not a bit.

There is a free passenger chain ferry across the old harbour, Gill took this en route.

I don't know what was going-on, but the official buildings on the harbour-side were being guarded by soldiers toting machine guns. Gill was more intrigued by the statue of the lion on sticks. She asked one of the police on guard what it was, he looked up as if he'd never seen it before and shrugged his shoulders, So much for the importance of observation in police work!

We stopped for a very late lunch on the outskirts of the old city. It sold very yummy wraps at very reasonable prices as well as having funky plastic chairs.

 

In fact the whole place was fairly funky from the slightly grungy, but very pleasant waitress to the somewhat left of field, vaguely bohemian fellow customers. I loved it.

This square is typical of 'old Marseille' high above the harbour, and built on the site of the original Graeco-roman city.

Slab-like 1950s apartment blocks separate the old city from the harbour, arched alleyways enable you to glimpse the port below. I had dismissed this as insensitive urban redevelopment until I read a local plaque which explained that in 1943/4 the occupying German army moved 20,000 people out of the district then deliberately dynamited over 1900 buildings. A city's history really is written in its stones, and as you read accounts of contemporary destruction in Aleppo and Damascus its sobering to reflect on how this level of bloodshed and wanton carnage haunted the cities of Western Europe within living memory.

A first glimpse of Marseilles cathiedral, built approprately right on the dockside, now next to the ferry-port.

It does look like a giant Liquorish Allsort, or to put it more properly, a striking pastiche of the Pisan Gothic style,

It really is right next to the waterfront with large ferries more or less tied=up alongside.

The area next to the cathedral, around the old Gare Maritime, has been re-developed as a cultural quarter featuring signature modern buildings. This one, 'The Villa Mediterranean' with its spectacular overhanging upper storey shows how you can achieve impact without necessarily going for high-rise. I think the city planners of Marseilles have been quite savvy in the way they have embraced modernity without sacrificing the place's soul. In particular they have maintained the old city's skyline, which is rare in these days of Gherkins and Shards.

It's good to see investment in public art put to social use. At least this sleeping itinerant had some clothes on, the chap on the bench near Fort St Nicolas was remarkably déshabillé. Not option for the homeless of Manchester in October!

The mirror-roofed pavilion is fun, upside down buses and all.

Maybe they ran out of honey-coloursed stone by the time they got to the portico, or the white columns were going cheap if you bought more than five.

After six hours of sightseeing we were footsore and glad to get back to the bus-stop. It had been a really great day aout. In these days of discount air travel it surprises me that Marseilles does not feature often as a really great destination for a short break. For us,,the most surprising aspect of Marseilles was its ambiance. Itis truly a delightful place, not at all frenetic, but laid back and relaxed. You sense in its cafe life a real neighbourhood feel. It is somewhere I would really like to return to, maybe next time find time to hop off the bus and take a closer look at le Corbusier's infamous 'brutalist carbuncle' and definitely take the time have a pastis in a cafe overlooking the Med.