France Guide
The Côte d'Azur
The Vieux Port
The cafés around the east end of the Vieux Port indulge the sedentary pleasures of observing street life, despite the fumes of exhausts and of fish sold straight off the boats on quai des Belges. Prime afternoon café lounging spot is the north (Le Panier) side, where the terraces are sunnier and the views better.
Two fortresses guard the harbour entrance. St-Jean, on the north side, dates from the Middle Ages when Marseille was an independent republic, and is currently undergoing conversion to create a new national Musée des Civilisations d'Europe et de la Méditerranée; an eye-catching new building alongside the fort is part of the project, due to be completed in 2012. The best view of the Vieux Port is from the Palais du Pharo, on the headland beyond Fort St-Nicolas, or, for a wider angle, from Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde (daily: summer 7am–7pm; winter 7am–6.30pm; bus #60 or tourist train from Vieux Port), the city's Second Empire landmark atop the hill south of the harbour. Crowned by a monumental gold Virgin that gleams to ships far out at sea, it's the most distinctive of all Marseille landmarks. Inside, model ships hang from the rafters while the paintings and drawings displayed are by turns kitsch, unintentionally comic or deeply moving, as they depict the shipwrecks, house fires and car crashes from which the Virgin has supposedly rescued grateful believers.
A short way inland from the Fort St-Nicolas, above the Bassin de Carénage, is Marseille's oldest church, the Basilique St-Victor (daily 9am–7pm; €2 entry to crypt). Originally part of a monastery founded in the fifth century on the burial site of various martyrs, the church was built, enlarged and fortified – a vital requirement given its position outside the city walls – over a period of two hundred years from the middle of the tenth century. It looks and feels like a fortress, though the interior has an austere power and the crypt is a fascinating, crumbling warren containing several sarcophagi, including one with the remains of St Maurice.