Fair enough. No one would confuse a visit to Marseille with slow-lane travel.
This is France’s third largest city, with more than 1.7 million people in its greater metropolitan area. It’s a place of pulse and 26 centuries of history, a port to the countries of the Mediterranean, with a cathedral on the hill that dominates landscape and seascape alike. It’s also a city of promise and pain, one with chic antiquities and sleek new buildings, but one, too, with double-digit unemployment and a dark reputation for attracting drug and arms dealers.
Still, as we walked through the historic Panier neighborhood early on a sunny Sunday, through streets with windows shuttered and lanes barely a lane wide, slow lane travel came to mind. We walked through quiet, largely deserted squares rich with the stories of yesteryear, when locals washed their clothes in the common fountains and where in 1749 the city opened a gated complex, complete with its domed Italian Baroque chapel, to house the city’s poor.
There is another, more modern, Marseille. The city, named the Capital of European Culture in 2013, celebrated by building its MuCEM (the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations), an iconic architectural achievement inside and out that integrates history and culture from as far back as Grecian times with distinctly contemporary themes and designs.
Inside, agricultural and other artifacts from Egypt, Turkey, Sudan, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Crete and more are displayed alongside distinctly 21st century videos of farming and fishing, religious worship and expressions of personal liberty and freedom. The exhibit on freedom of expression stands near a well-polished guillotine from the French revolution and a map showing countries, including the United States, that still allow capitol punishment.
My favorite exhibit was one that showed the ceremonial breads of the Mediterranean, accompanied by a film of how bakers make the “bread of marriage” in Crete.
Outdoors, the museum’s ornate lattice-work roof, which appears to bend with the wind though it’s made of a dark concrete material, blends seamlessly into the adjacent 17th Century Fort Saint-Jean, built by Louis XIV. The MuCEM’s entrance fee is but $7 for adults, $4.50 for seniors and $17 for a family with up to five children. Its rooftop restaurant and a ground floor gift shop are accessible at no charge.
Quirky? Fascinating? This museum and perhaps the city in which it is housed are a bit of both.
Seven years ago, on our first sabbatical to the south of France, Kathy and I foolishly visited Marseille but once, shepherded then by a retired city policeman who took a liking to us after I interviewed him for a story on the game of petanque. He drove us to the cathedral, but we saw the rest of the city through the window of a moving car, unable to sense its vibrant streets.
This time, we’ve already come twice, coaxed and accompanied both times by our warm, gracious and patient French teacher, Marine. She moved to Marseille more than two decades ago and clearly loves her city. In my afternoon French class she shared an essay on Marseille by the French writer Jean-Claude Izzo, a love sonnet of sorts that I appreciated even through the fog of trying to read in French. (My rough translation of one phrase … “I love this city, my city. It’s beautiful for its familiarity, which is like bread shared among us all.”)
As we wandered, Marine walked us past a neighborhood where she once lived, took us on the free ferry across the port and led us through an elbow-to-elbow, animated market of goods sold straight off the street.
We will return to Marseille again on our own, if for no other reason than the neighborhood Corsican restaurant we found. It’s called A Strega on Rue de Mouvestis, and its pear and dark chocolate tart is to die for.
I realize it may be a sacrilege to say this. But as we wandered Marseille’s streets, it struck me that though Paris is the heart of France’s historic grandeur, its arts and its government, Marseille may better represent the multicultural melange that France and Europe are rapidly becoming, with all the problems and promise inherent in this 21st century era of immigration.
As a quote in the museum’s main exhibit on the Mediterranean region read: “The principle of equality, between people, whatever their origin, gender or social status, still encounters resistance today.”
That it does. But on the streets of Marseille that seems less true than in other place we have visited in France.