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Marseille
City in southern France

Marseille

Marseille is a city in southern France, the prefecture of the Bouches-du-Rhône department and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.

Plan a trip to Marseille→From Montpellier/Méditerranée

Situated in Provence, it marks the eastern end of the Côte Bleue on the Mediterranean coast. Marseille is the second-most populous city proper in France, after Paris, with 886,040 inhabitants in 2023 over a municipal territory of 241 km2 (93 sq mi). Together with its suburbs and exurbs, the Marseille metropolitan area, which extends over 3,972 km2 (1,534 sq mi), had a population of 1,917,728 as of 2023. The cities of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, and 90 suburban municipalities have formed since 2016 the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, an indirectly elected metropolitan authority now in charge of wider metropolitan issues, with a population of 1,939,077 as of 2023. The southeast of Marseille is in Calanques National Park, making Marseille the only large city in France to have a national park within city limits.

Get in

Getting to Marseille

  1. 01
    Marseille-Provence International Airport

    Bus #91 is the easiest way to get to Marseille's city centre.

  2. 02
    Marseille-Saint-Charles

    Narvik (short, uphill walk from the Canebière and the Old Port which might be inconvenient if you have heavy luggage).

See

Worth seeing

  1. 01
    Vieux Port

    Watching fishermen selling their stock by auction is a must.

  2. 02
    Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde

    Rue Fort du Sanctuaire (Bus #60 goes from the Vieux Port to N-D de La Garde.

  3. 03
    Abbey of Saint Victor

    3 Rue de l'Abbaye.

  4. 04
    L'Hotel de Ville
  5. 05
    Le Panier
  6. 06
    Marseille Cathedral
Do

Things to do

You can visit the fabulous restaurants and cafes. You can go and do many adventurous things such as diving and hiring boats! The calanques (fjords) between Marseille and La Ciotat are a very popular sports climbing area. And of course, if the weather is fine, you can simply go to the beach! Stade Vélodrome, 3 boulevard Michelet. Watch football in the home of Olympique de Marseille.

  1. 01
    Artplexe
  2. 02
    Cinéma

    2 Rue du Cinéma (Bus# 36, 36B from Bougainville M2 ), cinema.alhambra13@orange.fr.

  3. 03
    City of Music
  4. 04
    CEPAC Silo

    35 quai du Lazaret (bus #35, 82; Euroméditerranée Gantes T2 T3 ), info@cepacsilo-marseille.fr.

Eat

Where to eat

Unsurprisingly, Marseille's cuisine is focused on fish and seafood. Its two flag-bearing specialities being the famous fish broth "bouillabaisse" and "aïoli", a garlic sauce served with vegetables and dried cod. La bouillabaisse is an excellent fish-based soup served with la rouille (a garlic-saffron sauce) and bread similar to crostini.

How locals move

Getting around Marseille the local way

  • Get inThere are direct daily services to Marseille from Ajaccio, Bastia, Porto Torres, Porto-Vecchio, and Propriano as well as ferries traversing the Mediterranean from Oran and Algiers in Algeria, usually with one or two crossings per week.
  • Get aroundA Ferry Boat crosses the Old Harbour (Vieux Port).
  • Get aroundSeveral other ferries propose connections with L'Estaque, Les Goudes, La Pointe-Rouge and Le Frioul.

From Wikivoyage: Marseille, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.

Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Falk2 (CC BY-SA 4.0), Wikimedia Commons.