Greek Massalia is still France’s oldest city
Marseille, prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône and of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, marks Provence’s Mediterranean edge as France’s second city. Greek settlers founded Massalia about 600 BC—the country’s oldest city and among Europe’s longest continuously inhabited. Romans knew it as Massilia; trade never really stopped.
Nineteen-nineties Euroméditerranée renewal and later tramways, Hôtel-Dieu hotel conversion, and waterfront projects tried to reboot a port that had always lived by cargo and migration.
English once spelled it Marseilles; Occitan writes Marselha, or Marsiho in the Mistralian norm, and the oldest form is Greek Massalía, since the city stayed Greek-speaking long after Rome took over. To the east, from the fishing village of Callelongue to Cassis, run the Calanques, a rugged coast of narrow fjord-like inlets. The broad Canebière boulevard runs east from the Old Port, whose entrance is guarded by Fort Saint-Nicolas and Fort Saint-Jean, and the basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde crowns the southern hills.
Marseille gets more sun than any other French city, about 2,897.6 hours a year against a national average near 1,950, and it is the driest major city, with 532.3 millimetres of rain, largely thanks to the cold, dry mistral from the Rhône Valley. Its extremes run from −16.8 °C on 13 February 1929 to 40.6 °C on 26 July 1983. The first settlers came from Phocaea, modern Foça in Turkey, and Massalia sided with Rome against Carthage in the Second Punic War.
It remained a leading port after the Visigoths took it in the fifth century, but declined after Charles Martel's forces sacked it in 739, and it joined the County of Provence in the tenth century. The Great Plague of 1720 killed much of the population, which recovered by mid-century. In 1792 volunteers from Marseille first sang the future national anthem in Paris, giving it its name. As an imperial port it linked France with Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and the Port de la Joliette replaced the Old Port under the Second Empire.
Source: Marseille
