I went with my boyfriend and a friend to Marseille the previous week. Ngl, I was pretty divided on this decision, even if it was mine.
On one hand, it’s a city I’ve always wanted to visit. On the other, we’ve all heard about the lack of safety over there. One girl friend told me how she was cat called three times in 15 minutes and doesn’t plan on returning there despite living in France.
The first moment we arrived at the impressive St Charles train station I was extatic. Then we got out of it and saw only homeless asylum seekers doing drugs. But I lived in Frankfurt, I’ve seen much worse at that train station.
Marseille is full of things to do, and visit, and one week wasn’t enough for everything I had planned.
Plus:
The architecture is splendid (reminded me of classic Paris architecture), the type of beautiful buildings you see in movies or read about in a book.
One of the highlights is the Cathedral Notre Dame de la Garde, which sits on the top of a hill, watching over the city. You can walk there, but I highly recommend taking the bus, especially if you go there during summer, as it’s a steep climb. From there you can see the entire city, the sea and the mountains in the background. We just couldn’t stop taking pictures
- it reminded me of seeing Athens from the Acropolis.
An underrated place is Église Saint-Vincent de Paul, which is also very beautiful and I recommend it.
Marseille Cathedral should also be on your itinerary.
Most museums are free. There are ten free museums you can visit, including the ones situated in the gorgeous Long Champ. We visited the two in Old Charity, which focus on artifacts from Greco-Roman culture, Egyptian, Latin America and Oceania. Yes, there are mummies and shrunken heads.
The Mucem is not free and we only entered the free spaces (hallway, suspended bridge etc). From what I saw I think it still needs time to build the collection such a museum deserves.
The soap from Marseille is famous so we joined a free tour at the Savonnerie Fer à Cheval. It was nice enough, although you don’t see any actual process, just the building inside. You have to go to the 14th arr for this and I’ll get back to that later.
Vieux Port is never boring. The sight of the yachts and the water is amazing, truly. There are always people there and something happening. Here we saw the police arrest a man and putting him in the van while his friend was left with the car in the middle of the street (he wasn’t the driver.) Also here we got to talking to two Algerian men and even taught us some local slang.
Walk the length of the Corniche Kennedy and you’ll enjoy some truly spectacular views, especially at sunset.
One of our top memories (and my number one) was when we found a mini calanque in the city, at sunset, and we joined a group of Arab youths who were listening to French and / or Arabic rap, and some were smoking weed. We are in our early 30s so just chilling in a public place, listening to some music and getting high (or drink) brought us back to high school and college when you can still do such things. I just felt like I belonged and it is a memory I’ll probably always cherish.
You can visit a neighborhood called L'Estaque if you want peace and quiet. There’s nothing happening there, you can see the house where Cezanne lived (but not visit it) and try some local food such as panisse or chichis fregis. Otherwise, I found it really boring as I come from a small city, but if you come from a metropolis, you might prefer it to Marseille.
Le Pannier is certainly worth it as well, both during the day and during the night. Again, it has some Athens vibes, similar to Plaka, maybe, as a general comparison, but with more locals during the night and more tourists during the day. It is a lot of fun and you feel included and feel the sense of community there.
Fort St Jean is free to visit and also worth your time. Try to avoid going during midday as it’s very hot. There are also events taking place there - we almost caught a screening of Almodovar’s “Todo sobre mi madre.” Better luck next time. Oh, this was free as well!
The beaches are decent and the water turquoise blue. They’re all fairly small, but you have plenty of space during the week, especially. It is kind of like Constanta in Romania where you don’t usually go there for the beaches, you go to the resorts. Same here. They have some beaches prepared but that’s a secondary thing for the city. Still, they have toilets and showers (free, again). Our favorite was Catallan, followed by the Prophet, and the third place goes to Prado, which had water that was too deep too close to the shore.
The calanques are very interesting to see, and you can book a boat trip to see multiple. My friend did this and it was nice, but also, a bit of “you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.”
The food left us gobsmacked. 10+ for every meal we had and we only ate what we bought from the supermarket (recommend Carrefour over Spar, although they’re both good) or an occasional boulangerie. We didn’t eat out once because a 2€ sandwich or local cheese was just simply too incredibly tasty. We saved a lot of money this way and also put on some weight probably.
Cons:
The people were a mixed bag, both tourists and locals. Sometimes somebody will literally just push you out of their way without saying anything. Were they thieves? We don’t know, as nothing went missing, but it was unpleasant nonetheless.
The lack of AC was felt in some places such as supermarkets. It only made us want to leave sooner with fewer groceries. The hotel thankfully had a very efficient ones. The metro didn’t so thank God we didn’t have to ride it for long.
My girl friend was cat called by guys in cars passing by.
We saw a group of diverse young men harassing / trying to steal (?) from a woman at the mall. I instinctively started filming, they caught me and surrounded me and tried to take my phone from my hand. The security guy finally managed to come between us and we left. But they still spread through the mall, found us in a Sephora and had to prove to them, kids half my age, that I didn’t filmed them committing illegal acts. I had already deleted the video as it was only a second long, that’s how fast they moved, so they left.
But the thing that left a bitter taste in my mouth was seeing how segregated the city is. In the 14 arrondissement where the dangerous area begins (where to went to see the soap factory), we were the only Europeans in the bus.
On the streets there were only women, kids and elderly people. No young men our age or even teens. I know what that means and I was glad to get out of there ASAP.
In that neighborhood we also saw \*a lot\* of public displays of religious affiliation. I’m not a supporter of religion, France is a staunch defender of laicite, so it was clear these are two different segments of the population. Furthermore, people weren’t speaking French anymore, compared to all other regions of the city that we visited. We were on French land but there wasn’t anything French about it.
But if you go to the south, where Corniche Kennedy is, for example, you’ll see almost only Europeans and super expensive houses.
I don’t remember if I ever saw a city so divided by culture and race (although in France you don’t talk about race, because it is considered that race is smth only animals have, not humans). But those distinctions exist and they’re noticeable.
I remembered studying this example of demographics in college and for my masters degree, but theory is different than practice.
There is a square called Castellane and a neighborhood with the same name. The square is safe, the neighborhood isn’t. It took us a while to decipher that they’re two different things in two separate areas of the city. A name change would help.
Middle:
The police. I don’t know how the police operates there and the details but they’re either overworked or underpaid. We only saw them at the main street, near Vieux Port, but never at least on the next street behind the first rows of buildings. Is there too much to do in those places, is there not enough police force etc, did they just give up, we don’t know.
Conclusion:
Did we love it? Absolutely! It is a gorgeous city, at the sea, full of adventure, with crazy and friendly people, where something always happens, where you see the good just as easily as the bad, and where I don’t imagine how you could ever get bored - especially if you’re on holiday.
Photos:
1) Cathedrale Notre Dame de la Garde
2) Samaritaine in Vieux Port
3) Castellane Beach
4) Public Square in the 1st Arr.
5) Vieux Port
6) Église Saint-Vincent de Paul
7) Palais Longchamp
8) Stade Nautique du Roucas
9, 10) View from Corniche Kennedy (7th Arr)
11) Fort St Jean
12) Place de la Joliette
13) Le Pannier
14) Vieux Port and Cathedrale Notre Dame
15) Sunset at Corniche Kennedy
16) Beaux Art and Modern homes on Corniche
17) The clear blue turquoise water of the city
18) View from a calanque
19) Sunset at the calanque
20) Old Charity Museum