Marseille

France

Things to do in Marseille:

View the Gallery Winding Streets of the Old Port

Marseille Restaurants

Affordable (74)

Le Jardin des Arts

Delightful French restaurant with�cute terrace, serves freshly prepared dishes, from lobster and smoked salmon quiche to giant prawns with seafood risotto. read more
Fine dining (46)

Une Table au Sud

Noted chef Lionel Levy explodes the senses with specialities that include pieds et paquets (lamb parcels) and, for the brave, macaroni poutargue (pasta with fish eggs). read more

Marseille Nightlife

Chilled (59)

Le Clan des Cigales

Named after Provence's famous cicadas,�this laidback salon de th� is in�the heart of Le�Panier,�the city's oldest neighbourhood.�Surrounded�by art galleries and�pottery�shops, it also�sells�locally... read more
Clubbing (57)

Le Crystal

Open until 2am, this is an inviting 1950s' style, late-night cocktail bar in the Vieux Port, under the arcades of the Pouillon buildings. read more

This Month in Marseille:

By Claire McAlpine

Shopping: Biscuit & Biscuit - Create your own piece of Marseille Art, choose a ceramic "biscuit", add a design and colour and then, while waiting for your biscuit to cook, enjoy tea and a muffin (9 Rue de Lodi, tel: 04 8426 7496).

Sightseeing: Head to Les Pennes Mirabeau just outside Marseille for the Medieval Festival, a romping, ribald weekend of semi-fake battles, men in armour, women in flowing robes, music, games, food, culture, dragon fire and more! (20-22 May from 10am.)

Key areas: Festival of Sacred Music - discover the variety and depth of sacred music performed in the �glise Saint Michel, a neo-gothic church with exceptional acoustics. Programme available on opera.marseille.fr (tel: 04 9155 1110).

Marseille News & Gossip

The New Marseille

MARSEILLE

The French playwright, filmmaker and novelist Marcel Pagnol immortalised Marseille's Ch�teau de la Buzine as a location in his best-selling autobiography Le Ch�teau de Ma M�re. A new audience discovered it in 1990 after the hit film of the same name. Next month, it will attract a new wave of visitors, but only partly because of his work.

As a child, Pagnol was fascinated by the beautiful ch�teau. After a series of popular novels and films, he found himself rich enough to buy it. He planned to turn the estate into a huge movie studio: a Hollywood on the Mediterranean. World War II put paid to his dream, and the property fell into decay. But now, 70 years later, a more modest version has been realised. It opens next month with a cinema for 300, exhibition space, library and m�diath�que set in 12 acres of the wild countryside that inspired Pagnol to write classics such as Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.

It's one of hundreds of projects under way in Marseille as the city prepares to be European City of Culture in 2013. Construction sites abound, new buildings are shooting up and museums and churches bristle with scaff olding for refurbs.

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma is designing a centre for contemporary art, Norman Foster will landscape the Old Port and other starchitects such as Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel will help revamp the commercial port.

There's also a five-star hotel in the Hotel-Dieu, a magnificent 18th-century hospital, a major facelift for the Velodrome, the Olympique de Marseille stadium, and a museum of Mediterranean civilisations part-based in the historic Fort Saint-Jean.

Meanwhile, one of Marseille's more oddball schemes opened in February. It was at 25 rue Thubaneau that revolutionaries in 1792 adopted La Marseillaise, later the national anthem. Now, in a special memorial, you can hear it played by dozens of artists, from Berlioz to the Beatles.

Marseille Trivia

May: Raymond Blanc, in The Very Hungry Frenchman, makes his mouth-watering terrine version of the famous Marseillais Bouillabaisse fish soup containing shellfish, fish and vegetables.
April: Napoleon III was related to the Bonaparte family through both his parents: his mother, Hortense de Beauharnais, was Josephine Bonaparte's daughter from her first marriage; her second husband, Napoleon Bonaparte, was his father's brother.
March: Marseille comprises a mosaic of inhabitants, many with family and historic links to Italy and Spain as well as significant communities of Corsican, Armenian, Maghreb, Turkish, Chinese and Vietnamese origin.