Marseilles

Marseille
Larger version

Marseille (Marselha in Provençal) is the second largest city in France. Located in the former province of Provence and on the Mediterranean sea, it is France's largest commercial port. (The English spelling "Marseilles" is falling out of usage.)

It has a population of 807,071 (1999 census), and 1,516,340 for the wider Marseille-Aix-en-Provence urban area.

Marseille is the préfecture (capital) of the Bouches-du-Rhône département.

History

Marseille was founded in 600 BC by Phoceans. During the Roman times, it was called Massilia.

Highlights

• The old harbor
• Notre-Dame de la Garde
• Château d'If, an ancient prison island, where The Count of Monte Cristo was jailed, in Alexandre Dumas' novel
• Unité d'Habitation de Marseille, by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier

Culture

The French rap band IAM is from Marseille.

The most widely circulated tarot deck comes from Marseille; it is called the Tarot de Marseille, and was used to play the local variant of tarocchi before it came to the notice of people who used it in cartomancy.

Miscellaneous

The metro is rubber-tired.

The city's main football club is Olympique de Marseille, European Cup winner in 1993 but tainted by the 1990s match-fixing scandal by then owner Bernard Tapie.

Marseille was the birthplace of:

• Jean-Henry Gourgaud, aka. "Dugazon" (1746-1809), actor
• Desirée Clary (1777-1860), wife of King Carl XIV Johann of Sweden, and therefore Queen Desirée or Queen Desideria of Sweden
• Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), first president of the Third Republic
• Etienne Joseph Louis Garnier-Pages (1801-1841), politician
• Honore Daumier (1808-1879), caricaturist and painter
• Joseph Autran (1813-1877), poet
• Olivier Émile Ollivier (1825-1913), statesman
• Joseph Pujol, aka. "Le Pétomane" (1857-1945), entertainer
• Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), poet and dramatist
• Fernandel (1903-1971), actor
• Eliane Browne-Bartroli (1917-1944), French Resistance, Croix de Guerre
• Louis Jourdan (born 1919), actor
• Jean Pierre Rampal (1922-2000), flute player
• Zinedine Zidane (born 1972), soccer player
• Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000), author

External links

• Marseille
• Early history
• Metro

Referenced By