Tourist information -
Marseille
The most renowned and populated city in France
after Paris, MARSEILLE has - like the capital - prospered and been
ransacked over the centuries. It has lost its privileges to sundry
French kings and foreign armies, recovered its fortunes, suffered
plagues, religious bigotry, republican and royalist Terror and had
its own Commune and Bastille-storming. It was the presence of so
many Marseillaise Revolutionaries marching from the Rhine to Paris
in 1792 which gave the Hymn of the Army of the Rhine its name of
La Marseillaise , later to become the national anthem.
Today, it's an undeniable fact that Marseille is a deprived city,
not particularly beautiful architecturally, and with acres of grim
1960s housing estates. Yet it's a wonderful place to visit - a real,
down-to-earth yet cosmopolitan port city with a trading history
going back over 2500 years. The people are gregarious, generous,
endlessly talkative and unconcerned if their style seems provocatively
vulgar to the snobs of the Côte d'Azur
Marseille is divided into sixteen arrondissements which spiral
out from the focal point of the city, the Vieux Port . Due north
lies the old town, Le Panier , site of the original Greek settlement
of Massalia. The wide boulevard leading from the head of the Vieux
Port, La Canebière is the central east-west axis of the town.
The Centre Bourse and the little streets of quartier Belsunce border
it to the north, while the main shopping streets lie to the south.
The main north-south axis is rue d'Aix , becoming cours Belsunce
then rue de Rome, av du Prado and finally boulevard Michelet . The
lively, youngish quarter around place Jean-Jaurès and the
trendy cours Julien lie to the east of rue de Rome. From the headland
west of the Vieux Port, the Corniche heads south past the city's
most favoured residential districts towards the beaches and promenade
nightlife of the Plage du Prado.
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