Weekend in Marseille doesn’t disappoint lone traveller

There’s a new energy to France’s second city with its lively port and funky artistic quarters

The Hotel Dieu, an 18th century hospital that was given a €145 million refurbishment to become the five-star Intercontinental Hotel.

Sat Oct 29 2016 - 05:12

Marseille, the Netflix series, wasn't a great hit earlier this year, but even if viewers scoffed at the hammed up acting and unlikely plot twists of the Mediterranean thriller starring Gérard Depardieu, they were probably also looking at the sun-soaked city backdrop and thinking, that looks good, let's go there. "We've had a lot of visitors who watched Marseille and came here for their holidays," says Marion Sardou, relations manager at the Intercontinental in Marseille where some of the scenes were filmed.

The hotel is basking in the attention, not just from the series but from a spectacular €145 million refurbishment that’s turned a former hospital into one of the Med’s most striking venues. Open less than two years, it occupies the Hotel Dieu, a grand 18th century palace that took 100 years to build and was the city’s main hospital until it closed its doors in 2003.

It sits high above the old port, with steps from the quayside leading up to its gated entrance, beyond which more steps lead up to a terrace bar that has one of the best views in the city, across the port to Notre-Dame de la Garde, the basilica that sits high on an opposite hill, guarding the city, its people and its boats.

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But the city doesn't need a second-rate TV show to draw the crowds. It's been doing that all on its own for centuries, starting with the Greeks who landed there more than 2,500 years ago. It has endured invasions by the Visigoths and the Saracens, and waves of visitors from Persia, Russia, Corsica and north Africa. More recently the port city of about 850,000 inhabitants has seen an influx of Spanish and Portuguese economic migrants while Parisians are also beginning to move there, lured by affordable property prices and a sunnier way of life.

Tourist draw

An adjacent neighbourhood called Panier was cleaned up and is now a tourist draw with its pleasingly narrow streets with colourful doorways opening into little squares dotted with cafes. Beyond the Mucem, development continues through the docklands, where huge cruise ships nose in right up to the quays, and a handsome new shopping precinct, Les Docks Village, has been created out of a series of cut stone warehouses.

New apartment schemes are springing up and in the traditional heart of the city there’s upscale shopping on the Rue Paradis and fine Haussmann-style boulevards such as Rue de la République where the buildings have undergone large scale refurbishment.

The pace of gentrification is such that estate agents’ billboards shout slogans like, “You missed this one!” from balconies, and tourists in search of a grittier Marseille, may have trouble finding it. The Irish woman who in 2006 announced on TripAdvisor that she was afraid to get out of her car in Marseille, might just not recognise it today.

October visits

Marseille bakes in the summer with temperatures soaring into the 40s. September is an ideal time to visit with cheaper flights (my Aer Lingus return costs about €130) and temperatures still pretty high – up to 30 degrees. The good weather tends to continue on through the autumn with October temperatures in the early 20s.

Getting from the airport to the city is easy, once you have worked out that the buses leave from a terminal other than that serving Irish flights. The bus ride costs about €8 and drops you at the railway station from where you can take the underground, or walk to the centre. It’s not far, though road and rail works around the train station are distracting.

All roads lead down to the Vieux Port with its giant Ferris wheel and that Foster pavilion where tourists throw back their heads to see themselves inverted in the mirrored ceiling above. From here you can catch boats that will take you on tours around the coast, visiting hidden coves that aren't accessible by road. You can also take a trip to Marseille's answer to Alcatraz, the Château D'If, an island fortress immortalised in Alexander Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.

Port life

Or you can simply have a coffee and watch the swarm of port life. You will pay for the privilege as waterfront cafes charge €3 to €6 for a coffee. Step into a side street and prices are likely to halve.

On a previous visit I stayed at the Bellevue Hotel in the Vieux Port, which has a great bar and restaurant called La Caravelle where the most sought-after tables day and night are those on its narrow wrought-iron balcony. It's full of character, but don't expect to get a good night's sleep.

This time I’m a guest of the Intercontinental where the port views are brilliant and the heavily-glazed windows and blackout curtains do an excellent job of keeping out the noise and lights. Marseille is a party town with the Ferris wheel spinning late into the night, fireworks going off at all hours, bright lights illuminating the port and music throbbing from waterfront bars and restaurants.

It’s not a restful city by day either. The sun glares down and the back streets are gaudy with graffiti but there’s an energy and an edginess that’s irresistible, or a bit threatening depending on who you talk to.

“Is that a gold necklace you’re wearing?”

I’m sitting at a small corner cafe drinking a bottle of water and a man is more or less at my feet on the pavement twirling an l-shaped metal tube through a small manhole. Water starts to gush down the pavement from the attachment and he’s adding some detergent.

“Is it real gold?” he asks, and I say, “No, it’s fake”.

“Good,” he says, “Otherwise . . .” and he makes a grabbing motion at his neck. “They would take it, like that.”

Maybe that happens, but I saw no signs of anything like that. Instead, on my three-day solo break I encountered nothing but smiles and I found a friend in Fabienne, whose pharmacy I fell into having walked up to the beautiful Notre-Dame basilica in the baking heat and come down again feeling peculiar. “Oh my goodness,” she says, or words to that effect. “It’s a coup de chaleur!”

She gives me water, aspirin and a cold compress in the back of her shop and, when I offer to pay she waves the money away, saying that I would do the same for her in Dublin, wouldn’t I?

Colourful neighbourhood

In the hip Cours Julien district I wander in and out of boutiques and vintage stores, where owners and artisans stop what they are doing to explain this piece of jewellery or that leather belt. It’s a wildly colourful neighbourhood with graffiti climbing up the walls and splashed across doorways. It’s worth a visit to see the street art alone.

By contrast the art in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, a magnificent colonnaded palace a short walk from the centre, is on the tame side, but it’s worth the walk uphill to visit because of the views across the city – and for its lovely, shady public gardens.

No trip to Marseille would be complete without trying the bouillabaisse, the fish stew that’s the city’s signature dish. Every second restaurant has it on the menu, but where to find a good one?

On a previous visit I’d paid plenty for a stew with tough grey bits of fish bobbing in it, but this time I tried the Miramar restaurant directly on the port. I watched two people at the next table being served the house bouillabaisse in two courses. First a smooth fish soup of a deep coral colour, accompanied by heaps of croutons and rusty-looking rouille arrived. Then, once they had cleared that, a stew, brimming with fish and potatoes.

It all looked a bit hot and hearty for a warm evening and so I try the burrata – a big ball of mozzarella-like cheese surrounded by toasted truffle shavings. It’s light and bursting with flavour, and there are tiny bread rolls stuffed with olives to go with it.

I’ve met up with a friend who’s given me a list of places to visit, including the Le Corbusier-designed Cité radieuse complex, a large apartment complex with a gallery on the roof. You can get Airbnb apartments there at reasonable rates, but I stick to the city to explore the shops, making a pilgrimage to Maison Empereur, the oldest kitchenware emporium in France.

What a fantastic place it is. Starting on rue Récolettes, it’s a warren of rooms that twist and turn through several buildings so you soon lose track of where you are. But one thing is sure, if you ever want a saucepan that’s four feet tall, or series of little brushes to wash out your bottles, or the perfect cutter for croissants, then this is the place for you.

It’s also the best place to buy true savon de Marseille, the murky green olive oil-based soap that will clean just about anything in the home – and your face too. There were once hundreds of producers of the stuff, but now just five or six companies still make the real thing. I picked up some cubes of it by Marius Fabre, which has been in business since 1900. It has a pleasant carbolic whiff and has turned out to be a mighty stain remover.

Patisserie wise, the Marseille speciality is a mystifyingly plain biscuit called the navette – a kind of ship’s biscuit flavoured with orange blossom. If you want a really authentic version head for Four de Navettes up above the Vieux Port at Rue Sainte. From there it is a 20-minute walk uphill to the basilica, which is a must visit, if only to admire the dainty model boats suspended from the gilded ceiling, and read the marble tablets imploring the safe return of men and boats.

Three days is too short a visit for this city. A longer stay would allow day trips into Provence – to Aix, or Avignon or into lavender country. Trips depart daily from the central tourist office and there are buses and trains from the main station, Gare Saint-Charles from where I reluctantly took the bus back to the airport and home.