Introducing Marseille
With its terracotta-roofed buildings the colour of cracked wheat, ripened apricot and blanched almond scattered around the mistral-whipped sea, Marseille is infused with a perceptible and irrepressible energy.
This gritty, grimy and gloriously real city – France’s oldest, and largest after Paris – isn’t gentrified like its Provençal counterparts. But its rough-and-tumble edginess, wailing sirens and litter-swirled streets, and its coastal corniches, chicaning around rocky inlets, coves and sun-baked beaches, are chock-a-block with treasures.
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Overhead of Vieux Port from Belvedere St Laurent, Bouches-du-Rhone.
- David Tomlinson
- Lonely Planet photographer
