The View over the Vieux-Port
From the rampart walk of the fort the whole of the old port opens up below you: a long rectangle of water packed with masts, the ferry boat crossing from one quay to the other, the fish market at the far end under the Canebière, the golden Virgin of Notre-Dame de la Garde on her hill to the right, and directly opposite, across the channel, the stone walls of Fort Saint-Nicolas. It is the postcard view of Marseille, and this is the spot the postcards are taken from.
Take a moment to read the harbour. The Greeks from Phocaea sailed into this inlet in about six hundred BC, called it Lacydon and built their town on the hill to your left, where the Panier now stands. For two thousand years everything came and went through this water: grain, wine, oil, soldiers, plague, pilgrims and, in the nineteenth century, so much traffic that the port silted and the city built the new basins to the north. Today the Vieux-Port is a marina, but fishermen still sell their catch on the quay each morning, and the Ferry Boat, immortalised by Marcel Pagnol, still shuttles across.
The view is best late in the day when the sun drops behind you and lights the far quay and the basilica. Bring the children to the King René tower, where the outlook is highest, or stand on the lower rampart nearest the water to watch the yachts squeeze through the channel only a few metres below. On a mistral day the sky turns a hard blue and you can see the islands beyond the harbour mouth as if they were next door.
Did You Know? The Vieux-Port was once closed at night by an iron chain stretched across the entrance between the two forts.
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