Early sarcophagi
Carved Christian tombs from the fourth and fifth centuries.
Bjs โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Marc-Julien-Photography โ CC0 ยท Marc-Julien-Photography โ CC0 ยท Marc-Julien-Photography โ CC0
Yes โ and they are the one part with no equivalent anywhere else in Marseille. The upper church is handsome but conventionally Gothic; below it you walk among carved marble tombs sixteen centuries old in silent cut passages. The fee is small and the visit takes about half an hour. And take a jacket: the gap between the sunny quay and the crypt is considerable, and it catches people out in summer especially.
A Marseillais biscuit shaped like a small boat and flavoured with **orange blossom**, hard and dry rather than soft like a cake. It is tied to the abbey and to Candlemas on 2 February, when they are blessed at a candlelit ceremony, but they are sold year-round from the historic bakery beside the abbey. They make one of the cheapest and most genuine things to carry home from Marseille: being dry they keep for weeks, and they don't crumble in a bag.
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From outside it does not look like a church but a **fortress**: blank walls, square towers and battlements โ which is what it became when it was fortified in the fourteenth century with the coast under threat. It stands on the south bank of the Old Port, facing the basin. Its age is exceptional: the monk **John Cassian** founded it in the fifth century over an old Roman burial ground, making it one of the oldest monastic institutions in the whole of the Christian West. The upper church you enter today is medieval, but the real value is under your feet. The **crypts** are the reason to come. You go down a staircase into a network of passages and carved chambers holding a rare collection of sculpted **early Christian sarcophagi** from the fourth and fifth centuries, past shrines cut into rock, some older than the abbey itself. The air is cold, damp and silent and the stone is black with centuries โ a sharp contrast with the light and the masts outside. The abbey also keeps an annual tradition: on **2 February**, Candlemas, a candlelit procession is held and **navettes** are blessed โ long, boat-shaped biscuits flavoured with orange blossom, baked at the historic bakery next door and sold all year round.
Carved Christian tombs from the fourth and fifth centuries.
Towers and battlements โ an abbey shaped like a castle.
Boat-shaped, orange-blossom, from the bakery next door.
3 Rue de l'Abbaye, 13007 Marseille