The port balcony
The whole Vieux-Port with its forts and MuCEM — Marseille's mother image.
Remontees — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Georges Seguin (Okki) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Georges Seguin (Okki) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Georges Seguin (Okki) — CC BY-SA 3.0
Completion practically coincided with the Second Empire's 1870 fall — the couple exiled, never returning. Eugénie later gave it to the city, which cycled it through hospital and medical school to its present role. Born a love gift, it lived as a public institution.
The ideal waterfront-day close: MuCEM, fort and cathedral by day, then round the port to the Pharo for sunset — facing everything you walked, lit. Or early morning for a clean shot without facing sun.
A good playground at one edge, vast running space and constantly moving ferries to watch — an easy family hour. Little food inside: gelato and cafés wait at the port below.
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Napoleon III built the Palais du Pharo as a gift for Empress Eugénie on a rock commanding the Vieux-Port's mouth — the empress never lived a day in it, and it passed to the city as an elegant congress centre ringed by its true jewel: the garden. The Pharo garden is Marseille's people's balcony: broad lawns sloping to the sea, giving the view in every city photograph — the whole Vieux-Port below, Fort Saint-Jean and MuCEM opposite, Notre-Dame above all, ferries sliding in and out. Free always, its benches and grass belonging to picnics. Sunset here is a collective Marseille rite: families, couples and joggers on the grass as the light gilds the city — the finest free close to a waterfront day.
The whole Vieux-Port with its forts and MuCEM — Marseille's mother image.
Napoleon III's gift its recipient never inhabited.
Sea lawns where Marseille gathers every summer evening.
58 Boulevard Charles Livon, 13007 Marseille