France’s second city: Marseille

I hadn’t seen a beach yet this summer, so I made my way to Marseille, France’s second-largest city.

Known for its port and Mediterranean climate, the city is by many also linked to crime and drugs and its rebellious reputation. My tour guide made sure to stress that the city has made great strides using the money flows that came with being named European capital of culture in 2013. Today, tourists can stroll through a gentrified old city center overtaken by Airbnb, colorful murals and artsy tourist shops where in some places it still smells like garbage and urine, and in many others like soap, the typical souvenir from Marseille.

The famous Marseille soap is a recipe imported from the Levant – and indeed the cube-shaped olive oil soap bars are just like those I know from Nablus. It shows the historical ties of Marseille with countries around the Mediterranean Sea. I frequently felt like I was in Tunisia – the buildings, the people, the vibes, the restaurants, the street cart vendors, and post-sunset scenes of leisurely strolls along the corniche and vieux port.

For most of its history, southern Europe formed more of a connected unity with the Mediterranean region rather than with the rest of the European continent. This shared history of connections and mobilities is told in the Museum of Mediterranean Civilizations, showing the similarities and differences between cities around the sea that used to be a highway, but now is a frontier, and a graveyard. It’s housed in an impressive building and it’s the only museum in the top 10 of most visited museums in France that is not in Paris.

I’ve noticed how many cities in France take pride in second position without even mentioning the first – people have told me that Lourdes has the second-highest hotel density, Toulouse is the second most attractive French city to live in, and Marseille is second in many things, all just behind intouchable Paris. When I told a Frenchman that Marseille is France’s oldest city, he answered, as if by reflex, that it’s only second to Paris.

But human history of the Mediterranean region goes back much further than that of the European hinterland, and Marseille indeed lays claim to being the oldest French city. Its age is commonly estimated at 2600 years, but it has been inhabited certainly even longer as evidenced by the discovery of a cave with prehistoric wall paintings of tens of thousands of years old (including, astonishingly, images of penguins).

And there’s absolutely much more uniqueness to Marseille than being second to Paris. It has its very own charm as a coastal city with southern vibes and layout (Marseille has only one ‘Hausmann’ street, the architect of modern Paris), gorgeous churches (one by the waterfront and one overlooking the city atop a hill of 150 meters), the close proximity of nature (notably the national park with beautiful fjords or ‘calanques’ which I visited by boat), and most wonderfully of all: the sea. (With, admittedly, very tiny beaches…)