BY JOHN FITZGERALD
Movie buffs may know Marseilles from its central role in several films, including 1971's The French Connection and the more recent Marius et Jeannette. In them, the city seems harsh, crowded and irrepressibly seductive.
As I found on a trip to the city last fall, this depiction isn't too far from the truth. Marseilles long suffered a dodgy reputation owing to the prevalence of organized crime, drug trafficking and a litany of other problems. But it is making efforts to revamp its image, which, combined with a bustling port area, famed bouillabaisse restaurants and empire-building architecture, make for an adventurous destination.
On my first visit to the city last fall, accompanied by my partner, Gérard, there wasn't much of a plan. We were staying at an apartment in nearby Provence, but because the Mistral had set in and the weather was on the cool side -- dissuading us from lounging around the pool -- we took plenty of day trips, including to Marseilles, only an hour's drive away. We intended to lunch on bouillabaisse, the famous fish soup native to the city, at one of the restaurants in the Old Port. Afterward, we would go exploring.
We parked at the Centre Bourse shopping arcade and walked the short distance to the Old Port, with its low-flying seagulls and soothing saltwater smells. The tourist office was packed when we stopped in to get a map, as was the large shop close by that sold T-shirts, posters and other merchandise promoting the city's hugely popular soccer team. Leading the French national team to victory at the 1998 World Cup was Marseilles's Zinédine Zidane, today a national hero.
With roughly 800,000 inhabitants, a quarter of them North Africans or people of North African descent and with Europe’s third largest Jewish community, Marseilles has also become home over the years to sizable numbers of Italians, Armenians and pieds-noirs, French settlers who fled Algeria after that country's independence.
On the Quai des Belges, elderly North African men dressed in loose-fitting djellabas and heelless slippers joined raucous German and Italian tourists and grim-faced women who surrounded the fishmongers' trays. Atop the tables, the morning's catch, from seahorse to octopus and eel, was being scrutinized and selected.
Behind the crowds, Marseilles's immense boat basin -- Louis XIV moored many of his war ships here -- was filled with neat rows of pleasure craft of every size and description. Some of the boats that presented themselves were painted pink, yellow and other nursery-school colours. They looked as if they were set for bathtub duty rather than skimming the sea that, over the centuries, has been so crucial to Marseille's fortunes.
To the left, as we stood on the Quai des Belges, we could see the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica atop Garde hill, the city's highest observation post. A commanding statement of Romanesque-Byzantine-style architecture, Notre-Dame has embodied Marseilles since it was constructed in the 1850s during the heyday of Napoleon III's Second Empire.
Greek sailors from Asia Minor founded France's oldest and second-largest city 26 centuries ago, and it has served as the gateway to the Mediterranean, especially during the years of the French colonial empire in the 19th century. Today, the port of Marseilles handles upwards of two million cruise passengers a year and its container ship traffic is among the world's biggest.
Boat lovers ourselves, we easily found the Musée de la Marine et l'Economie in the Palais de la Bourse on the famous avenue known as La Canebiére. Inaugurated in 1860, the former stock exchange displays paintings inspired by the port city, as well as ship models, including the famous Normandie. It was certainly the largest and arguably the greatest of all the transatlantic luxury liners that plied the Atlantic during the 1930s.
The museum, I was happy to discover, is also a repository for dozens of vintage shipping company posters. Hung in heavy frames from walls adjacent to the former trading floor, the posters exude glamour as they trumpet the joys of travelling to Algeria, Cochin China and other exotic locales during the heyday of France's colonial past.
Le Miramar, the restaurant on the Quai du Port where we decided to have lunch, specializes in bouillabaisse and has been at its present location opposite the boat basin for more than 35 years. The classic bouillabaisse is supposed to contain at least a half dozen different kinds of fish (Marseilles fishermen would set aside a small part of their catch to feed themselves and their families). It's a complete meal and starts with the fish bouillon in which this most fragrant of stews has cooked over a gentle fire; the soup is poured over garlic-rubbed slices of dry bread.
I don't know how many different types of fish were piled on the huge, saffron-coloured tray that a server brought to our table, but he rhymed off the French names for mullet, skate, conger eel, scorpion fish and John Dory. The rules dictate (there is a bouillabaisse charter to safeguard standards) that the fish be cut up in front of those consuming it. Gérard, French-born and finicky about these things, was a tad critical about the overall results, but I was dazzled by the foreplay.
Two days later, on another visit, we enjoyed a marathon Moroccan lunch, featuring a delicious tajine, at a pleasant little place called Le Souk. In hindsight, I chalked up the meal's length as much to the remarkable rosé on offer as to the comfort of our surroundings.
Afterward, we visited Le Panier, the oldest of Marseilles's 16 arrondisements. It's not far from the Old Port on a hill behind the Hôtel de Ville. In 1943, the occupying Germans partly destroyed the district in an effort to eradicate resistance fighters and refugees hiding in houses along its narrow streets.
Although many of the buildings we passed looked dilapidated, quite a few others were in the process of being renovated. On one side street, a small store had been reborn as a tony art gallery, while another nearby had been fitted out as a shop selling high-tech lighting.
The centrepiece of renewal in Le Panier is the magnificent museum complex known as La Vieille Charité Cultural Centre, home to the Museum of Mediterranean Archeology and the Museum of African, South Seas and American Indian Arts. Built as a homeless shelter in the 17th and 18th centuries, it has a baroque chapel inside a large courtyard that's surrounded by three-tiered balconies. The architectural beauty of the complex's exterior is underscored by the fact that the builders used rose-tinted stone.
But a dose of the city's traditional side was never far away. We soon happened upon an atélier where a trio of cheerful artists chatted to us as they painted santons, the traditional hand-crafted clay figures so much a part of Provençale Christmas celebrations.
By the end of the afternoon, we found ourselves walking amidst the briskly moving crowds that overflowed the sidewalks of the Rue de Rome as it leads into the handsome and busy Place Castelane. In the centre of the square, a flamboyant-looking fountain, its base covered with semi-nude stone figures that looked to be writhing in distress or exaltation (I couldn't tell which), was ringed by rush-hour traffic.
Ordering a pastis, Marseilles's potent, licorice-flavoured apéritif, we settled behind a table at one of the sidewalk cafés and watched the grey-pink sky. Beneath it, the fountain's water jets surged and tumbled in the dying light.
HOW TO GET THERE:
Air France (www.airfrance.com; tel.2501 9433) and Cathay Pacific (www.cathaypacific.com) fly non-stop from Hong Kong to Paris-Charles-de Gaulle. Air France has numerous daily connecting flights to Marseilles-Provence Airport. Flight time is one hours 15 minutes. Alternately, the TGV, France’s high speed train makes the Paris-Marseilles run in three hours.
WHERE TO STAY:
Sofitel Palm Beach Marseilles, 200 Corniche JF Kennedy, (tel. 33 4/91161900; www.tablethotels.com)