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.
The City
of Marseille
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...
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