Getting a handle on Le Panier

We are walking north from our hotel which looks out over the Vieux Port. Walking towards nearby Le Panier, the area where, sometime in the 6th century BCE, Greek Phocaeans crossed the Mediterranean in their penteconters, those swift, agile ships, and founded Massalia — modern-day Marseille.

The ground begins to slope upwards. Then those steep, narrow streets and implausible flights of steps branching off in all directions. Colourful graffiti street art and small paintings and mosaics embellishing pastel facades and undressed walls. Luxuriant pot plants on the window ledges and doorsteps of homes and boutiques and craft shops.

Tourist must-sees such as the Maison Diamantee, its own facade enlivened by beautiful diamond-shaped stones, and the historic Hotel Dieu, now a luxury hotel. Cafes already full, people spilling out onto the squares and terraces, indulging in coffee and pastries . . .

Distracted, my wife D and I must race to catch up with Anne and Patrice, who move ahead with the fitness and fluency of locals.

Le Panier (“The Basket”) derives its name from a 17th-century inn, Le Logis du Panier. Fitting, as, despite, or because of, its boom-and-bust cycle of war and migration, of crime and regeneration, of poverty and wealth, of plague and health, Le Panier seems to be woven more from the positive textures of cultural life, capacious and resilient enough to hold an abundance and diversity of creative expression.

Before continuing to La Vieille Charite, Anne stops to purchase, from a specialist bakery, a bag of freshly-baked navettes — those small, boat-shaped biscuits associated with Marseille and the greater Provence region. I bite into one. Dry, crumbly, the faint taste of orange-blossom.

I recall having previously visited Pierre Puget’s 17th-century almshouse, now known as La Vieille Charite, some years ago. But it was a fleeting visit, and so I was pleased on this occasion to have ample time to explore not just the very fine Baroque chapel but the superb Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology, which occupies the first floor.

Three storeys of four arcaded galleries surround the courtyard and chapel. The aforementioned museum is on the first floor; on the second, the Museum of Art of Africa, Oceania and Amerindia; on the ground floor, a temporary exhibition space for contemporary art. There is also a poetry centre, a cinema, a library and, as I later discover, an excellent cafe.

We linger beneath the unique ovoid dome of the chapel, taking in the somewhat austere architectural features given a modern gloss courtesy of Laure Prouvost’s Mere We Sea installation, before devoting our attention to the exceptional Egyptian and Greco-Roman artefacts in the first-floor museum.

Indeed, it comes as somewhat of a surprise to discover the museum’s Egyptian collection is rivalled in size and excellence only by the Louvre’s. A large sarcophagus, its leathery occupant clearly visible, is especially haunting — a grim riposte to the animated Greco-Roman statuettes in another room.

After a restorative coffee break, we take our leave of Le Panier by way of the 19th-century Marseille Cathedral, La Major, which is an easy walk south-west of La Vieille Charite. But that is a story for another day, when I compare La Major with the contemporaneous and equally magnificent Notre-Dame de la Garde . . .

+ To find out more, visit Le Panier and La Vielle Charite, visit marseille-tourisme.com/en/discover-marseille/culture-heritage