50 Fun Facts About Marseille

La Marseillaise is named for volunteers from Marseille, but in which French city was the anthem written?

Strasbourg is where army officer Rouget de Lisle wrote the song in 1792, as a war song for the Army of the Rhine. Marseille volunteers sang it on their march to Paris, and the nickname stuck.

Which Alexandre Dumas novel made the island prison of Château d'If, off Marseille, famous around the world?

The Count of Monte Cristo locks its hero in the Château d'If for 14 years before a daring escape. The real fortress, built in the 1520s, never had to fight off an attack.

Which French footballer, scorer of two headers in the 1998 World Cup final, grew up in Marseille's La Castellane?

Zinedine Zidane was born in La Castellane in 1972, the youngest of five children of Algerian parents. Both of his goals against Brazil in the final came from corner kicks.

Which Marseille fish stew began as a fishermen's meal of bony rockfish they were unable to sell?

Bouillabaisse takes its name from two Provençal verbs meaning to boil and to lower the heat. An authentic Marseille pot must include rascasse, a spiny rockfish that lives on reefs close to shore.

What name did Greek settlers give Marseille when they founded the trading colony around 600 BC?

Massalia became Massilia to the Romans, and the modern name most likely descends from it. The port they founded is considered the oldest city in France.

Which everyday product, made from olive oil and sea water, has Marseille produced for about 600 years?

Soap from Marseille was so prized that a royal edict of 1688 reserved the name for bars made with olive oil. The first documented maker in the port was recorded in about 1370.

Which steep, fjord-like inlets give their name to the national park lying partly inside Marseille's city limits?

Calanques line the rugged coast between Marseille and Cassis. The national park created around them in 2012 is mostly sea: only about a sixth of its area is dry land.

Which Swiss-born architect gave Marseille the Unité d'Habitation, a housing block with a rooftop paddling pool?

Le Corbusier finished the block in 1952 with shops, a hotel and wide corridors nicknamed streets in the sky. It joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016.

Which animal, a gift from Portugal's king to the Pope, stopped on Marseille's island of If in 1516?

The rhinoceros drew many visitors to the island, King Francis I among them. Its ship later sank off Italy, and Albrecht Dürer made his famous woodcut without ever seeing the animal.

Which hilltop basilica, crowned by a gilded Madonna and Child, do Marseille locals call the Good Mother?

Notre-Dame de la Garde stands on the highest natural point in Marseille, a 149-metre limestone outcrop. Its statue, made of copper covered in gold leaf, is 11.2 metres tall.

Which anise-flavoured aperitif, first sold by Paul Ricard in 1932, is especially popular in Marseille?

Pastis appeared some 17 years after France banned absinthe. Unlike its predecessor it contains no wormwood, and takes its flavour mainly from star anise and liquorice root.

In 1993 Olympique de Marseille became the first French club to win which European trophy, at a final in Munich?

Champions League glory came through a single headed goal by defender Basile Boli just before half-time. No other French club lifted the trophy until Paris Saint-Germain in 2025.

Which cold, dry wind brings clear skies to Marseille, one of the sunniest cities in France?

Mistral means masterly in Occitan, and the wind can blow for several days at a time, mostly in winter and spring. It also helps make Marseille the driest major city in France.

Which disease killed about half of Marseille's people after the ship Grand-Saint-Antoine docked in 1720?

Plague arrived from the Levant aboard the ship, in what proved Western Europe's last major outbreak of the disease. A dry-stone wall two metres high was built across the countryside to contain it.

Ancient Marseille lost its independence in 49 BC after backing the losing side against which Roman general?

Julius Caesar confiscated most of the port's trading empire but let it keep nominal autonomy, out of respect for its old friendship with Rome. He left the siege itself to his legate Trebonius.

Which Marseille-born forward won four Premier League titles at Manchester United, his collar turned up?

Eric Cantona grew up a fan of Olympique de Marseille and joined the club in 1988 for a French record fee. His four English titles came in the space of five years.

Which cards, used for both games and fortune-telling, have a classic 78-card pattern named after Marseille?

Tarot packs in the Marseille pattern were very popular for card games in 17th- and 18th-century France. The oldest surviving examples were made in the port in 1639.

Which title did Marseille hold in 2013, the year its waterfront museum MuCEM opened beside Fort Saint-Jean?

European Capital of Culture status, shared with Košice in Slovakia, brought more than 900 events to Marseille and nearby towns, plus over 600 million euros of new cultural buildings.

Which sport of the Paris 2024 Olympics held all of its races far from the capital, at Marseille's marina?

Sailing ran from 28 July to 8 August in the waters off Marseille. The Stade Vélodrome also staged Olympic football matches that summer.

Which boules game, born in nearby La Ciotat, holds its best-known tournament in Marseille every year?

Pétanque takes its name from pieds tanqués, feet planted, because players throw from a standing start inside a circle. The annual Marseille tournament draws more than 10,000 players.

Which garlic sauce is served in Marseille with boiled fish, hard-boiled eggs and cooked vegetables?

Aïoli means garlic and oil in Provençal. Some cooks add egg yolk and lemon juice, which brings it close to a garlic mayonnaise, while others leave the egg out altogether.

Which painter from nearby Aix painted many views of the bay from his room at L'Estaque, on Marseille's edge?

Paul Cézanne recorded the changing seasons and the shifting light over the water at L'Estaque. Auguste Renoir, Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy also painted in the same little port.

Which French film star played a veteran mayor in Marseille, the first French-language Netflix original series?

Gérard Depardieu's character, Robert Taro, was inspired by the real long-serving mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin, who dubbed him the other mayor. The show ran for two seasons from 2016.

Besides Paris and Marseille, which French city, the country's third largest, is split into arrondissements?

Lyon has nine arrondissements, Marseille 16 and Paris 20. Marseille's are grouped in pairs into eight sectors, each with its own mayor and council.

Désirée Clary, a Marseille silk merchant's daughter once engaged to Napoleon, became queen of which country?

Sweden gained its Marseille-born queen in 1818, when her husband took the throne as Charles XIV John. Her sister Julie married Napoleon's brother Joseph and became queen of Spain.

Marseille's founders set out around 600 BC from which ancient Greek city on the coast of modern Turkey?

Phocaea stood where the Turkish town of Foça is now, and Marseille is still nicknamed the Phocaean city. Its people also founded Empúries in Spain and Velia in Italy.

Marseille's grand avenue, the Canebière, takes its name from which rope-making plant long traded in the port?

Hemp is cannabis in Latin, and the avenue's Provençal name, Canabiera, grew out of that word. The kilometre-long street has been called the Champs-Élysées of Marseille.

Which French king built two forts at the mouth of Marseille's Old Port with their cannons aimed at the town?

Louis XIV ordered the forts of Saint-Jean and Saint-Nicolas after the townspeople rose against their governor. The guns were there to control Marseille, not to defend it from the sea.

Marseille-born playwright Edmond Rostand wrote which 1897 play about a swordsman-poet with a famously large nose?

Cyrano de Bergerac was a triumph at its premiere and brought the word panache into English. Its hero had been a boyhood idol of Rostand, who was born into a wealthy Marseille family.

Which Mediterranean island, the birthplace of Napoleon, is linked to Marseille by ferry?

Corsica has close ties with Marseille, which is home to the second-largest Corsican community in France. Napoleon was born on the island at Ajaccio.

Which French high-speed train puts Marseille about three hours from Paris, more than 750 km away?

TGV trains pull into Gare Saint-Charles, one of the main terminals for the fast lines in the south of France. The same route puts Lyon just over an hour and a half away.

Which Italian club, with Marco van Basten in his last match, lost a 1993 final to Olympique de Marseille?

AC Milan lost to a single first-half goal, and it proved a sad farewell for Van Basten. Substituted with an ankle injury, he spent two years in recovery before retiring in 1995.

Which businessman and one-time minister led Olympique de Marseille during its 1993 match-fixing scandal?

Bernard Tapie was accused of fixing a league match against Valenciennes so that his stars could save their energy. He was convicted and spent nearly six months in prison in 1997.

Which writer, later of the Académie française, set his plays Marius and Fanny in a Marseille waterfront bar?

Marcel Pagnol became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française, in 1946. Chef Alice Waters so loved the films of his Marseille Trilogy that she named her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse.

Which 1998 action comedy written by Luc Besson sends a white Peugeot 406 racing through Marseille?

Taxi follows a former pizza delivery man turned cabbie who must help a bumbling police inspector catch a gang of bank robbers. Marion Cotillard is among its stars.

Marseille is the prefecture of which French department, whose number 13 begins every local postcode?

Bouches-du-Rhône means mouths of the Rhône, the river whose delta lies just to the west. A letter to Marseille's 14th arrondissement, for example, carries the postcode 13014.

Which grotto of Stone Age art near Marseille is reached only by divers, through a tunnel 37 metres under the sea?

Cosquer is named after Henri Cosquer, the professional diver from Cassis who found the drowned entrance in 1985. A replica opened at the Villa Méditerranée in Marseille in 2022.

Marseille is the chief port on which wide bay of the Mediterranean, stretching from Catalonia to Toulon?

The Gulf of Lion has a wide continental shelf, and much of its coastline is lagoon and salt marsh. Its fishing industry is based on hake.

Which explorer from ancient Marseille voyaged north around 325 BC and first described the midnight sun?

Pytheas also introduced the distant land of Thule to geography, and his is the earliest known account to suggest the moon causes the tides. His own book is lost and survives only in the writings of others.

Which boat-shaped biscuits, handed out in Marseille at Candlemas, has one local bakery been making since 1781?

Navettes are given out after a Black Madonna is carried in procession from the crypt of the Abbey of Saint-Victor. Food writer M. F. K. Fisher wrote that they smell better than they are.

Which small painted nativity figures have been sold at a Marseille fair every Christmas season since 1803?

Santons means little saints in Provençal. They caught on during the French Revolution, when churches were closed and families began setting up small nativity scenes at home.

Which country's king, Alexander I, was shot dead in Marseille in 1934 with a newsreel cameraman metres away?

Yugoslavia's king was shot by Vlado Chernozemski, and French foreign minister Louis Barthou also died in the attack. The moments just before and after the shooting were captured on film.

After Marseille rebelled against the Revolution's government in 1793, which punishing title was it given?

Town With No Name, in French Ville-sans-Nom, was the title forced on Marseille once the Convention's troops had retaken it. Rebel Toulon was likewise relabelled Port-la-Montagne.

Marseille's Palais Longchamp, home to two museums, was built to celebrate which 19th-century arrival in the port?

Water from the Durance reached Marseille by canal in 1849, a project spurred by drought and a deadly cholera epidemic. The palace built to mark it took 30 years to complete.

Founded in 1599, which Marseille institution is regarded as the first of its kind anywhere in the world?

The chamber of commerce in Marseille is a century and a half older than the first in the English-speaking world, which was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1750.

Marseille-born sea captain Joseph Mascarel, who never quite mastered English, became mayor of which American city?

Los Angeles was spared embarrassment when a visiting US general turned out to speak fluent French, so the two could exchange official courtesies. Mascarel also worked there as a baker and vintner.

Which architect designed Marseille's CMA CGM Tower, a 147-metre shipping headquarters that became her first tower?

Zaha Hadid was chosen for the project in 2004, and the 33-floor building was completed in 2011. From its rocky hilltop across town, the basilica still reaches higher than the tower.

Which pioneering Marseille rap group gave its members ancient Egyptian stage names such as Akhenaton and Imhotep?

IAM formed in 1989 and often uses Mars as a nickname for Marseille in its songs. One reading of the group's name is Invasion Arrivée de Mars, an invasion from Mars.

Which Olympique de Marseille striker, famous for his spectacular volleys, won the Ballon d'Or in 1991?

Jean-Pierre Papin was the French league's top scorer for five seasons running, and his volleys are still known as Papinades. He scored 181 goals in 279 games in that spell.

Which type of aircraft did Marseille-born Henri Fabre invent, first flying it from the Étang de Berre in 1910?

The seaplane, named the Fabre Hydravion, made four flights that day, although Fabre had never piloted an aircraft before. The machine survives and is displayed at the Musée de l'Air.