Sublime port

Ports can challenge national stereotypes: think of the difference between St Petersburg and Russia, or Naples and Italy. Since England is so small, and London so big, few English ports have generated their own identities. In France, however, despite the alleged stranglehold of Paris, ports such as Bordeaux, Nice and Marseille have remained remarkably different in culture and character.

Of them all, Marseille is not only the oldest city in France — it was founded by  Greeks in 600 BC — but also the most independent; in 1907 Jules Charles-Roux called it ‘a separate republic, neither national nor French’. Incredibly David Crackanthorpe’s wise, erudite and sensitive book on Marseille is the first in English. Although the city is comparatively near and has 300 days of sun a year, it is less familiar to most English people than Capetown.

Echoing a brilliant essay by Richard Cobb, Crackanthorpe sees Marseille’s main characteristics as secrecy, exuberance and — like many other Mediterranean ports — a preference for foreign over internal connections. From Louis XIV to Le Corbusier, Paris governments and planners have rarely been popular in Marseille. In 1660 Louis XIV entered Marseille through a breach in the walls, and built the forts of Saint Jean and Saint Nicolas to crush, as well as to protect, the city. Revolts were frequent. In 1871-6 the French government placed Marseille under a state of siege and in 1939 under ‘administrative tutelage’ .

The city was more successful in trade than in politics. One of the richest ports of the Roman empire, Massalia was known as ‘the Athens of the Gauls’. Petronius, author of the Satyricon, was born there. It recovered its ancient prosperity in the 17th century, largely though trade with the Ottoman empire, over which its chamber of commerce (the first established in France) was given a monopoly.