France's oldest city has been doing things its own way for over 2,600 years. Marseille sits on the Mediterranean with a port at its heart, a skyline broken by basilicas and fortress towers, and a daily fish market on the quayside that has been running since 1909. It is loud, layered and entirely itself — and that is precisely why it rewards proper exploration.
What to see in Marseille
Château d'If
A 16th-century island fortress sitting a short boat ride from the Vieux-Port, Château d'If became a state prison from 1800 and provided Alexandre Dumas with the setting for The Count of Monte Cristo. The crossing alone, with open-sea views back towards the city, makes the trip worthwhile.
Fort Saint-Jean
Standing at the entrance to the old harbour, Fort Saint-Jean was built between 1668 and 1671 on the orders of Louis XIV. It retains a 12th-century command structure and the square tower of King René, and a suspended walkway now links it directly to the MuCEM — a fine way to cross from history into contemporary culture.
La Vieille Charité
A 17th-century baroque building in the Le Panier district, La Vieille Charité was originally built to house the city's destitute. Its rectangular courtyard, lined with stone arcaded galleries and crowned by a baroque domed chapel, is one of the most architecturally coherent spaces in Marseille.
Cité Radieuse by Le Corbusier
Built between 1947 and 1952 and now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Cité Radieuse is a landmark of modern architecture. Its 337 apartments, internal street of shops and communal rooftop terrace were Le Corbusier's attempt to reimagine how people could live together in a single building.
Palais Longchamp
Completed in 1869 to mark the arrival of water from the Durance canal, the Palais Longchamp is hard to miss. Its monumental baroque fountain — complete with a chariot drawn by Camargue bulls — anchors two wings that house the Fine Arts Museum and the Natural History Museum respectively.
Cosquer Cave Replica
The original Cosquer Cave lies underwater and is inaccessible to the public, so this full-scale recreation at the Villa Méditerranée is the only way to see its 480-plus Palaeolithic artworks. The paintings and engravings date back some 30,000 years — a perspective that puts the rest of the city's long history firmly in context.
Abbaye Saint-Victor
Founded in the 5th century, the Abbaye Saint-Victor is among the oldest buildings in Marseille. Its exterior looks more like a castle keep than a church. Below ground, the crypt preserves 4th- and 5th-century sarcophagi and gives the clearest sense of just how far back the city's inhabited history actually stretches.
L'Ombrière, Vieux-Port
L'Ombrière is a Norman Foster-designed canopy on the Quai des Belges: a mirrored steel roof measuring 22 by 48 metres that reflects the port and the people moving beneath it. It is free to walk through, impossible to miss, and one of those public spaces that genuinely improves the place it occupies.
Marseille audio guide with Guipock
Visiting a city like Marseille — with its layered districts, its scattered landmarks and its habit of hiding the most interesting things down unmarked streets — is a different experience when you have good information at the right moment. That is what the Guipock audio guide for Marseille is designed to give you.
The app uses a GPS-guided map that keeps track of your position as you walk. When you reach a point of interest, you get a notification so you know to open the audio guide for that stop. There is no guesswork about whether you are standing in the right place.
The audio itself is produced with high-quality generated audio technology, available across a wide range of languages and regional accents — including en-GB, en-US, en-AU, fr-FR, de-DE, es-ES, es-MX and more — so every member of a group can listen in their own language simultaneously.
Before you leave your accommodation, you can use the offline download feature to save all content to your phone. Once downloaded, the app Marseille audio guide works without a mobile data connection — useful in areas where signal is patchy or when you would rather not run up roaming charges.
Travelling as a family? The family code feature means one purchase covers the whole group: each person uses their own device, in their own preferred language. And if you have younger children with you, the children's mode offers the same route with shorter audio, simpler language and the kind of details that actually hold a child's attention.
