Marseille defies the old movie stereotypes to both delight and surprise.
Marseille. To many the very name of France's second city resonates with images of gangsters glowering behind cupped cigarettes in dark alleys, daring jewel heists across rooftops or angry youths loitering on street corners. But as a fairly frequent visitor over the past decade I have come to ask myself, what was I thinking? Which movies had so coloured my interior landscape that the moody world of film noir had overtaken a reality which is sun-bathed and golden, where wild flowers cover the spring hillsides and families go about their daily lives in a multi-cultural, sea-encircled city that thankfully is largely left alone by the tourist hordes that have made so much of the Cote d'Azur a summertime hell.
Being met at the airport by my friend Nicole, and chattering all the way to her inner-city apartment, while absorbing through every pore that particular blend of sea, bright flat light and terracotta hillsides is a luxury. But as I have become more familiar with the inner city, I hop on the bus and am transported to Britomart's equivalent just behind the Saint-Charles station in downtown Marseilles. I could of course get a taxi but instead I walk, pulling my trundler suitcase behind me.
I revel in a slow wander up the hill crossing the main street, la Canebiere, on the way. This grand boulevard in times gone by provided a boundary between the wealthy southern quarter and the more multi-cultural areas to the north and west. It is north I head, passing the prestigious Lycee Thiers where Nicole teaches the brightest of France's young stars and saying hello to my favourite statue in the world, a prancing muscular brute of a stallion by more stairs. Cavallo-San Marco, by Italian sculptor Ludovico de Luigi, is one of several scattered around the world, but I can't help but think under the aching blue of a spring Mediterranean sky is where he truly belongs.
Reaching the square at the top I pause in a dim cafe and await Nicole. This is the south, not Paris, so my stumbling attempts to order a Kir Royale are greeted kindly rather than with a sneer and the proprietor sits down to practise his rudimentary English while I do the same with my worse French.
