MARSEILLE AND TOULON 

Marseille and Toulon are Provençal cities on the sea. The Mediterranean Sea brought them power and disaster, the wealth of commerce and the misery of piracy and disease. They shared the ugliness of the penal settlements, the beauty of Pierre Puget’s art, the calamity of the bubonic plague and finally the affluence and prosperity of the post-war years.  

First known as Massilia, Marseille was founded by Phocean traders in 600 BC. Built as a Greek city, its foundation in Greek legend is celebrated in the Carnival of Marseille.  After the Roman siege by Julius Caesar it developed as a centre of learning. We visit forts, the Toulon Royal Tower and the Chateau d’If, the fortress immortalised as the prison of The Count of Monte Cristo.  

We see how the naval arsenal was transferred from Marseille to Toulon and how convicts lived and died in appalling conditions in their galleys, in chains. We visit factories where the famous Marseille soap is manufactured; we hear how the Marseillaise, now the French national anthem, was first composed and how the local fish dish bouillabaisse is prepared.  Finally, the sea provides the perfect location for training courses in deep-sea saturation diving.

  CHAPTERS

• Greek Marseille and its legendary foundations; the carnival of Marseille
• The Roman siege of Massilia and its final defeat by Rome
• Origins of Toulon and the fortress of Château d’If
• Marseille galleys, its arsenal and the chiourme
• Arsenal transferred to Toulon; its penal settlement is the bagne
• Art of Pierre Puget and the Vieille Charité; Fort St Nicholas and Fort St John
• The 1720 bubonic plague ravages Marseille and Toulon
• Marseille soap manufacture
• 18th century Marseille, revolution and the origin of the Marseillaise
• From the belle époque to Marseille and Toulon today
• Making the bouillabaisse, the Provençal fish soup
• Comex and the hyperbaric diving school in Marseille