Provençal faience
Tin-glazed ceramics from a centuries-old regional industry.
Charliemoon — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Rama — CC BY-SA 2.0 fr · Remontees — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Remontees — CC BY-SA 4.0
In the middle of **Parc Borély** in southern Marseille stands an elegant eighteenth-century country house built by the Borély family, wealthy merchants who wanted a seat worthy of their standing away from the crush of the city. The balanced stone frontage, the staircases and the decorated salons have reached us in unusually good condition. Since 2013 the house has been a museum of decorative arts, faience and fashion. The combination is unusual but makes sense here: Marseille was a port that imported and exported taste, and **faience** — tin-glazed earthenware — was a flourishing regional industry for centuries. The collection brings together French furniture, glass, silver, local ceramics and costume across several centuries, displayed in the rooms of the house itself rather than in neutral galleries, so it reads as a furnished home more than an exhibition. Its great advantage is being inside a park: a visit combines the museum with the lawns, the lake and the botanical garden around it, and it is one of the better things to do in Marseille with children who need space after enclosed rooms.
Tin-glazed ceramics from a centuries-old regional industry.
Objects shown in furnished rooms, not neutral galleries.
Lawns, a lake and a botanical garden around the house.
134 Avenue Clot Bey, 13008 Marseille
Parc BorélyBorély is Marseille's first family park: seventeen hectares around the elegant e3 minutes walk4.4
MAC — Museum of Contemporary ArtMarseille's museum of contemporary art, known in short as **[mac]**, sits in the12 minutes walk4.0
Cité Radieuse (Unité d'Habitation)An enormous concrete slab lifted on thick pillars in southern Marseille: this is16 minutes walk4.9
Mazargues ObeliskA stone obelisk in the Mazargues district of southern Marseille, raised in the e24 minutes walk4.1It does, provided the whole site is the plan rather than the museum alone. Rooms of furniture and ceramics will not hold a small child for long — half an hour to forty minutes is a realistic ceiling — but **Parc Borély** around the house is large, with a lake, lawns, play space and a botanical garden, and that is the reward. Arrange the visit in that order: the museum first while patience lasts, then the park with no clock on it.
They are one site with two different doors: the **park** is open public ground, free, where Marseille walks and runs and picnics, and the **château** is the historic house at its centre, which is the ticketed museum. You can visit the park without entering the museum at all, and many people do. The reverse is not really possible: you cross the park to reach the museum door regardless.