France

Versailles, formerly the capital city of the kingdom of France, is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important administrative and judicial center. The city (commune) of Versailles, located in the western suburbs of Paris, is the préfecture (capital) of the Yvelines département. Population of the city at the 1999 census was 85,726 inhabitants, down from a peak of 94,145 inhabitants in 1975. Versailles is made world-famous by the Château de Versailles, from the forecourt of which the city has grown.

A seat of power
Versailles was the unofficial capital city of the kingdom of France from May 1682 (King Louis XIV moves the court and government permanently to Versailles) until September 1715 (death of Louis XIV and regency, with the regent Philippe d'Orléans returning to Paris), and then again from June 1722 (King Louis XV returns to Versailles permanently) to October 1789 (King Louis XVI forced to move back to Paris by the people of Paris). During the entire period, Paris remained the official capital city of France, and the official royal palace was the Palace of the Louvre, but in practice government affairs were conducted from Versailles, and Versailles was regarded as the real capital city.

Versailles became again the unofficial capital city of France from March 1871 (French government takes refuge in Versailles due to the insurrection of the Paris Commune) until November 1879 (newly elected left-wing republicans relocate government and parliament to Paris).

Versailles was made the préfecture (capital) of the Seine-et-Oise département at its inception in March 1790 (Seine-et-Oise had approximately 400,000 inhabitants at its creation). By the 1960s, with the growth of the Paris suburbs, the Seine-et-Oise département had reached almost 3 million inhabitants and was deemed too large and ungovernable, and thus it was split into three départements in January 1968. Versailles was made the préfecture of the Yvelines département, the largest chunk of the former Seine-et-Oise département. At the 1999 census the Yvelines département had 1,354,304 inhabitants.

Versailles is also the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese (bishopric) which was created in 1790. The diocese of Versailles depends from the archdiocese of Paris.

In 1975 Versailles was made the seat of a Court of Appeal, whose jurisdiction covers the western suburbs of Paris.

Since 1972, Versailles was made the seat of one of France's 26 académies of the Ministry of National Education, in charge of supervising all the elementary schools and high schools of the western suburbs of Paris.

Versailles is also an important node for the French army, a tradition going back to the monarchy, with for instance the military camp of Sartory and other institutions.

The name of Versailles appears for the first time in a medieval document dated 1038. In the end of the 11th century the village curled around a medieval castle and the Saint Julien church. Its farming activity and its location on the road from Paris to Dreux and Normandy brought prosperity to the village, culminating in the end of the 13th century, the so-called "century of Saint Louis", famous for the prosperity of northern France and the building of gothic cathedrals. The 14th century brought the Black Plague and the Hundred Years' War, and with it death and destruction. At the end of the Hundred Years' War in the 15th century, the village started to recover, with a population of only 100 inhabitants.

In 1561, Martial de Loménie, officer of the crown, became lord of Versailles. He obtained permission to organize four fairs per year, and one market every Thursday. The population of Versailles was 500 inhabitants. In 1575 the seigneury of Versailles ended up in the possession of the family of Gondi, a family of wealthy and influential parliamentarians at the Parlement of Paris. In the 1610s, the Gondi invited several times the king Louis XIII on some hunting trips in the large forests of Versailles. In 1622 the king became the owner of a piece of wood in Versailles for his private hunting. Later in 1624 he bought some land and ordered Philibert Le Roy to build there a small hunting "gentleman's chateau" of stone and red bricks with a roof of slate. In this small castle happened the famous historical event called the Day of the Dupes, on November 10, 1630, when the party of the queen mother was defeated and Richelieu was confirmed as prime minister. Eventually, in 1632, the king obtained the seigneury of Versailles altogether from the Gondi. The castle was enlarged between 1632 and 1634. At the death of Louis XIII in 1643 the village had 1,000 inhabitants. King Louis XIV, his son, was only 5-year-old.

It was only 20 years later, in 1661, when Louis XIV started his personal reign, that the young king showed interest in Versailles. The idea of leaving Paris, where as a child he had experienced first-hand the insurrection of the Fronde, had never left him. Louis XIV commissioned his architect Le Vau and his landscape architect Le Nôtre to transform the castle of his father, as well as the park, in order to accommodate the court. In 1678, after the Treaty of Nijmegen, the king decided that the court and the government would be established permanently in Versailles, which happened on May 6, 1682.

At the same time, a new city was emerging from the ground, resulting from an ingenious decree of the king dated May 22, 1671, whereby the king authorized anyone to acquire a lot in the new city for free. There were only two conditions to acquire a lot: 1- a token tax of 5 shillings (5 sols) per arpent of land should be paid every year (in 2005 US dollars, that's $0.03 per 1,000 ft² per year); 2- a house should be built on the lot according to the plans and models established by the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi (architect in chief of the royal demesne). The plans provided for a city built symmetrically with respect to the Avenue de Paris (which starts from the entrance of the castle). The roofs of the buildings and houses of the new city were not to exceed the level of the Marble Courtyard, at the entrance of the castle (built above a hill dominating the city), so that the perspective from the windows of the castle would not be obstructed. The old village and the Saint Julien church were destroyed to make room for buildings housing the administrative services managing the daily life in the castle. On both sides of the Avenue de Paris were built the Notre-Dame neighborhood and the Saint-Louis neighborhood, with new large churches, markets, aristocratic mansions, buildings all built in very homogenous style according to the models established by the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi. Versailles was a vast construction site for many years. Little by little came to Versailles all those that needed or desired to live close to the political power. At the death of the Sun King in 1715, the village of Versailles had turned into a city of approximately 30,000 inhabitants.

When the court of King Louis XV returned to Versailles in 1722, the city had 24,000 inhabitants. With the reign of Louis XV, Versailles grew even further. Versailles was the capital of the most powerful kingdom of Europe, and the whole of Europe admired the new architecture and design trends coming from Versailles. Soon enough, the strict building rules decided under Louis XIV were not respected anymore, real estate speculation flourished, and the lots that had been given for free under Louis XIV were now on the market for hefty prices. By 1744 the population had reached 37,000 inhabitants. The city changed considerably under kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. Buildings were now taller. King Louis XV built a Ministry of War, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where the Treaty of Versailles ending the American Revolutionary War was signed in 1783 with the United Kingdom), and a Ministry of the Navy. By 1789 the population had reached 50,000 inhabitants, and Versailles was now the third or fourth largest city of France, and one of the largest cities of Europe.

Seat of the political power, Versailles naturally became the cradle of the French Revolution. The Estates-General met in Versailles on May 5, 1789. The members of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath on June 20, 1789, and the National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism on August 4, 1789. Eventually, on October 5 and 6, 1789, a throng from Paris invaded the castle and forced the royal family to move back to Paris. The National Constituent Assembly followed the king to Paris soon afterwards, and Versailles lost its role of capital city.

From then on, Versailles lost a good deal of its inhabitants. From 50,000, the population declined to 28,000 inhabitants in 1824. The castle, stripped of its furniture and ornaments during the Revolution, was left abandoned, with only Napoleon briefly staying one night there and then leaving the castle for good. King Louis-Philippe saved the castle from total ruin by transforming it into a National Museum dedicated to "all the glories of France" in 1837. Versailles had become a sort of Sleeping Beauty. It was a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic of the old monarchy.

On January 18, 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War the Germans proclaimed the king of Prussia, Wilhelm I, emperor of Germany in the very Hall of Mirrors of the castle, in an attempt to take revenge for the conquests of Louis XIV two centuries earlier. Then in March of the same year, following the insurrection of the Paris Commune the French government under Thiers relocated to Versailles, from where the insurrection was militarily quelled. The government and the French parliament stayed in Versailles after the quelling of the insurrection, and it was even thought for some time that the capital of France would be moved definitely to Versailles in order to avoid the revolutionary mood of Paris in the future. Restoration of the monarchy was even almost realized in 1873. Versailles was again the political center of France, full of buzz and rumors. Eventually, as the left-wing republicans won elections after elections, the parties supporting a restoration of the monarchy were defeated and the new majority decided to relocate the government to Paris in November 1879. After that, Versailles was never again used as the capital city of France, but the presence of the French Parliament there in the 1870s left a vast hall built in one aisle of the palace which is still used by the French Parliament when it meets in Congress to amend the French Constitution.

It was not until 1901 that Versailles recovered its level of population of 1790, with 54,982 inhabitants at the 1901 census. In 1919, at the end of the First World War, Versailles was put in the limelight again as the various treaties ending the war were negotiated and signed in the castle proper and in the Grand Trianon. After 1919, as the suburbs of Paris were ever expanding, Versailles was absorbed by the urban area of Paris and the city experienced a strong demographic and economic growth, turning it into a large suburban city of the metropolitan area of Paris. The role of Versailles as an administrative and judicial center has been reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s, and somehow Versailles has become the main centre of the western suburbs of Paris.

The centre of the town has kept its very bourgeois atmosphere, while more middle-class neighborhoods have developed around the train stations and in the outskirts of the city. Extremely well linked with the center of Paris by several train lines, Versailles is a chic suburb of Paris. However, the city is extremely compartmented, divided by large avenues inherited from the monarchy which create the impression of several small cities ignoring each other. Versailles was never an industrial city, even though there are a few chemical and food processing plants. Essentially, Versailles is a place of services, such as public administration, tourism, business congresses, and festivals.

Ansouis is a very pretty old village, perched on a low hill with a nicely restored chateau. The village is located 25 km north of Aix-en-Provence, 8 km southeast of Lourmarin (north of the Durance river and south of the Luberon mountains). The village is well restored, with neat stone walls, and has a fair number of ancient little streets for a wandering visit.

Built in amongst the houses is a beautiful half-round bell tower, dating from the 16th century and topped with a rather angular campanile.

The town's chateau is impressive, but fairly stark from the outside. Ansouis is best visited in the afternoons: the chateau is open in the afternoons only, and some of the more interesting village sights are in the chateau grounds.

There are a lot of flowers in the village. Some are in gardens along the stone-walled terraces and in the neat gardens of the village houses. There are also little gardens around the village with hand-lettered signs giving the names of the regional wild flowers; an in-town botanical walk with a personal touch.

Commerce is minimal, but there are all the basic shops, including a terrace café. A [santon] maker has his atelier here, which opens every summer at the beginning of July.

The town's Musée Extraordinaire has a varied collection, from treasures picked up on distant sea voyages to local geological artifacts. The museum is (like the chateau) open in the afternoons.

We visited on a Sunday morning in June, and there was a market set up at the road junction just outside the village to the north (the Cucuron road).

There were one or two restaurants, but we didn't stay long enough to try any of them. Ansouis is worth stopping by for a short visit if you're in the area, but we it's not the sort of place we would seek out to spend a half-day.

Chateau

The Chateau d'Ansouis was build as a hilltop fortification sometime before the year 961. It has evolved over the centuries to its current form of a fabulous estate-house, but retains some of the fortified walls and watchtowers of the earlier versions, and is classified as a national site et monument historique.

Plus Beaux (Loveliest)

Ansouis is rated one of the Plus Beaux (Lovliests) villages of France. The Plus Beaux Villages de France association rates 141 villages with this honor. The initial requirements are: popoulation under 2000, having at least two "protected" sites, and the municipality requesting they be considered.

History

Name
First record, 961 Ansoyse
Prehistoric: Vestiges include pottery, signs of a lithic (stoneware) industry and millstones.
Medieval: Ansoui belonged to the counts of Forcalquier until the 13th century, when it was aquired by the Sabran, a powerful Provençal family, who still own the chateau.

This ocre-red village is a tourist destination on the southern edge of the Plateau de Vaucluse. Roussillon is a beautiful village, with its red rocks, red stone buildings and red tile roofs, but it's such an apparently well-frequented tourist site that doesn't let a traveller stop without paying.

All roads in, around and near the village have pay parking only, with a person guarding every spot with a hand out for your money. And there are no signs anywhere indicating the "official" cost of parking, so you'll have to trust to the honesty of the person and the moment, along with your knowledge of currency rates and local economic conditions, to determine if you're paying a "fair" price to stop at this village and mingle with the other tourists.

The old village is, of course, well-kept and lovely, and the remains of the ancient château which is built into the buildings. The 19th-century clock and bell tower is topped by a 19th-century wrought-iron belfry (campanile).

Giants' Causeway
The Giants' Causeway is a natural park of jagged cliffs of ochre beside the village of Roussillon. A walking tour of the park should take well under an hour. (See our Reader's Comments, below.)

Name
Roman: Vicus russulus (from the red-ocre environs)
First record, 989: de Rossillione

History
Prehistoric: So many neolithic signs and artifacts have been discovered here that the site is now an important archeological reserve.
Roman: There are signs of the Roman occupation of Roussillon when they were mining ocre from the hills.
Medieval: Various Lords ruled here until the Revolution, including Agoult, Vins and Isle.

Paris is the capital city of France, as well as the capital of the Île-de-France région, whose territory encompasses Paris and its suburbs. The city of Paris proper is also a département, called Paris département (French: département de Paris). It is a wonderful city for aimless wandering of which features a wide variety of style and décor and boasts a wide assortment of entertainment to satisfy even the most benign of tastes.

Paris, together with its suburbs and satellite cities, forms the Greater Paris metropolitan area, with a population estimated at 10.5 million as of January 2004. Paris is the third largest metropolitan area in Europe after Moscow and London.

Greater Paris metropolitan area, with a total GDP in 2003 higher than Brazil's and Russia's, is the largest financial and business center of Europe (alongside London), harboring more than 30% of France's white-collar population, as well as more than 40% of the headquarters of French companies, with the largest business district of Europe (La Défense), and the second-largest stock exchange in Europe (Euronext).

Known worldwide as the City of Lights (la Ville Lumière), Paris has been a major tourist destination and cultural hub for centuries. The city is renowned for the beauty of its architecture, its urban perspectives and avenues, as well as the wealth of its museums. The Seine River runs through the heart of Paris and is the site of the Notre Dame Cathedral and Louvre Museum to which divides the city into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to the south.

Formerly the capital of a colonial empire stretching over five continents, Paris is still regarded as the heart of the French-speaking world and has retained a strong international position, hosting the headquarters of the OECD and the UNESCO among others. This, combined with its financial, business, political, and tourism activities, has turned Paris into one of the major transportation hubs in the world. New York, London, Tokyo, and Paris are often listed as the four major global cities.

The original Latin name of Paris was Lutetia, or Lutetia Parisiorum, known in French as Lutèce. Lutetia was later dropped in favor of only Paris, based on the name of the Gallic Parisi tribe, whose name perhaps comes from the Celtic Gallic word parios, meaning "caldron", but this is not certain.

Traditionally Paris was known as Paname in French slang, but this vulgar appellation is gradually losing currency. ("I'm from Paname" (♫).)

The inhabitants of Paris are known as Parisians in English, as Parisiens in French. The pejorative term Parigot is sometimes used in French slang.

Locally, inhabitants of the Paris suburbs are known as banlieusards. Inhabitants of the whole Paris metropolitan area are known as Franciliens, i.e. from Île-de-France.

The name of the city comes from the name of a Gallic tribe (parisis) inhabiting the region at the time of the Roman conquest. The historical heart of Paris is the Île de la Cité, a small island now largely occupied by the huge Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. It is connected with the smaller Île Saint-Louis (another island) occupied by elegant houses built in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Paris was occupied by a Gallic tribe until the Romans arrived in 52 BC. The invaders referred to the previous occupants as the Parisii, but called their new city Lutetia, meaning "marshy place". About 50 years later the city had spread to the left bank of the Seine, now known as the Latin Quarter, and was renamed "Paris".

Roman rule had ceased by 508, when Clovis the Frank made the city the capital of the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks. In 511, he commissioned the building of the cathedral of St.Etienne on the Île. Viking invasions during the 800s forced the Parisians to build a fortress on the Île de la Cité. On March 28, 845 Paris was sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collected a huge ransom in exchange for leaving. The weakness of the late Carolingian kings of France led to the gradual rise in power of the Counts of Paris; Odo, Count of Paris was elected king of France by feudal lords while Charles III was also claiming the throne. Finally, in 987 Hugh Capet, count of Paris, was elected king of France by the great feudal lords after the last Carolingian king died.

During the 11th century the city spread to the Right Bank. In the 12th and 13th centuries, which included the reign of Philip II Augustus (1180 to 1223), the city grew strongly. Main thoroughfares were paved, the first Louvre was built as a fortress, and several churches, including the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, were constructed or begun. Several schools on the Left Bank were grouped together into the Sorbonne, which counts Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas among its early scholars. In the Middle Ages, Paris prospered as a trading and intellectual nucleus, interrupted temporarily when the Black Death struck in the 14th century, and again in the 15th century when urban revolts drove the royal court to abandon the city for almost 100 years. Under the reign of King Louis XIV, the Sun King, from 1643 to 1715, the royal residence was moved from Paris to nearby Versailles.

The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Many of the conflicts in the next few years were between Paris and the outlying rural areas.

In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War ended in a siege of Paris, followed by The Paris Commune followed. It surrendered in 1871 after a winter of famine and bloodshed. The Eiffel Tower, the best-known landmark in Paris, was built in 1889 in a period of prosperity known as La Belle Époque (The Beautiful period). The famous Parisian Haussmann Style also dates back to this period, during which much of the Paris known today was planned and constructed.

In 1900 Paris hosted the 1900 Summer Olympics, and hosted them again in 1924 (1924 Summer Olympics).

In June 1940, several weeks after the German attack on France during World War II, Paris fell to German occupation forces, which remained there until late-August 1944. After the battle of Normandy, Paris was liberated when the German general Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered after skirmishes to the French 2nd Armoured Division commanded by Philippe de Hauteclocque backed by the Allies.

In the late-1960s, the Tour Montparnasse, a large, modern skyscraper, was constructed just south of the Jardin du Luxembourg. It is starkly out of place in its neighborhood and ruined many of Haussmann's carefully planned vistas; as such it was one of the most immediate causes for the changes in zoning and administrative rules that now keep all urban development outside the city limits (principally confining skyscrapers to La Défense).

Immigration
The metropolitan area of Paris is one of the most multi-cultural in Europe. At the 1999 census, 19.4% of the total population of the metropolitan area were born outside of metropolitan France.

As a comparison: at the 2001 UK census, 19.5% of the total population of the metropolitan area of London was born outside of the (metropolitan) United Kingdom, while at the 2000 US census 27.5% of the total population of the New York-Newark-Bridgeport metropolitan area was born outside of the United States (50 states), and 31.9% of the total population of the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County metropolitan area was born outside of the United States (50 states).

Still at the 1999 French census, 4.2% of the total population of the metropolitan area of Paris were recent migrants (i.e. people who were not living in France in 1990). The most recent immigrants to Paris come essentially from mainland China and from Africa.

Monuments and landmarks
The Eiffel Tower - a "temporary" construction of Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 Universal Exposition
Arc de Triomphe - monument at the center of the Place de l'Étoile, commemorating the victories of France and honoring those who died in battle.
Les Invalides - museum and burial place of many great French soldiers, including Napoleon.
The Conciergerie - medieval building; former prison where some prominent members of the ancien régime stayed before their death during the French Revolution
Palais Garnier - Paris' central opera built in the later Second Empire period.
Cathedral of Notre Dame on the Île de la Cité - Paris' 12th-century ecclesiastical centrepiece
The Sorbonne - the University of Paris, the centre of Paris' Latin Quarter
Statue of Liberty - a smaller version of the New York City harbor statue which France gave to the United States in 1886, located on the Île des Cygnes on the Seine. Another version is in the Luxembourg Garden.
The Panthéon - beautiful church and tomb of a number of France's illustrious men and women
Sainte-Chapelle - 13th century Gothic palace chapel.
Église de la Madeleine
Place des Vosges - square in the Marais district laid out by Henry IV
Flame of Liberty public co-opted temporary memorial for Diana, Princess of Wales
The Wallace fountains, spread throughout the city.
The Grand Palais - a large glass exhibition hall built for the 1900 Paris Exhibition.

Museums

Louvre - a huge museum housing many works of art, including the Mona Lisa (La Joconde) and the Venus de Milo statue.
Musée d'Orsay - an art museum housed in a converted 19th century railway station, which contains mainly Impressionist works.
Centre Georges Pompidou, also known as Beaubourg - houses the Musée National d'Art Moderne and a cultural center with a large public library. Famous for its external skeleton of service pipes.
Musée Rodin - a large collection of works by France's most famous sculptor
Musée du Montparnasse in the former residence of artist Marie Vassilieff at 21 Avenue du Maine, details the history of the great artistic community of Montparnasse.
Musée Cluny, also known as the Musée National du Moyen-Age, houses a large collection of art and artifacts from the Middle Ages, including the tapestry cycle The Lady and the Unicorn.
Musée Picasso, exhibits nearly 3000 pieces of art by Pablo Picasso as well as art from his own personal collection including works by Cézanne and Matisse.

Historical centres
Montmartre - historic area on the Butte, home to the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur and also famous for the studios and cafés of many great artists.
Champs-Élysées - a 17th-century garden promenade turned Avenue connection between the Concorde and Arc de Triomphe.
Place de la Concorde - at the foot of the Champs-Élysées, built as the "Place Louis XV" site of the infamous guillotine. The Egyptian obleisk it holds today can be considered Paris' "oldest monument".
Place de la Bastille - Former eastern stronghold and gate of Paris.
Montparnasse - historic area on the Left Bank, famous for the its artists studios, music-halls, and café life.
Quartier Latin - Paris' scholastic center from the 12th century, formerly stratching between the Left Bank's place Maubert and the Sorbonne university.

Marseille (English alternate spelling Marseilles)(Provençal: Marsiho or Marsilha) is the second largest city in France and the third metropolitan area, with 1,516,340 inhabitants at the 1999 census. Located in the former province of Provence and on the Mediterranean Sea, it is France's largest commercial port and the largest in the Mediterranean.

Marseille is the capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur région, as well as the préfecture (capital) of the Bouches-du-Rhône département.

Marseille was founded in 600 BC by Phocaean Greeks as a trading port under the name Μασσαλία (Massalia; see also List of traditional Greek place names). It was overrun by Celts and then conquered by the Romans. During the Roman times, it was called Massilia. In 1934 Alexander I of Yugoslavia arrived at the port to meet with the French foreign minister Louis Barthou. He was assassinated there by Vlada Georgieff who hated Alexander's refusal to recognise Croatia as a separate state.

Culture
The French national anthem "La Marseillaise" is named for the Revolutionary troops from Marseille.

The most widely circulated tarot deck comes from Marseille; it is called the Tarot de Marseille, and was used to play the local variant of tarocchi before it came to the notice of people who used it in cartomancy.

Sights
The old harbor
Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde
Château d'If, an ancient prison island, where The Count of Monte Cristo was jailed, in Alexandre Dumas' novel
Unité d'Habitation de Marseille, by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier
The calanques

Births
Marseille was the birthplace of:

Antonin Artaud (1897-1948), author
Maurice Béjart (born 1927), ballet choreographer
Jean-Henry Gourgaud, aka. "Dugazon" (1746-1809), actor
Désirée Clary (1777-1860), wife of King Carl XIV Johann of Sweden, and therefore Queen Desirée or Queen Desideria of Sweden
Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), first president of the Third Republic
Etienne Joseph Louis Garnier-Pages (1801-1841), politician
Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), caricaturist and painter
Joseph Autran (1813-1877), poet
Olivier Émile Ollivier (1825-1913), statesman
Joseph Pujol, aka. "Le Pétomane" (1857-1945), entertainer
Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), poet and dramatist
Vincent Scotto (1876-1952), guitarist, songwriter
Fernandel (1903-1971), actor
Eliane Browne-Bartroli (1917-1944), French Resistance, Croix de Guerre
Louis Jourdan (born 1919), actor
Jean Pierre Rampal (1922-2000), flutist
Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000), author
Zinedine Zidane (born 1972), soccer player
Clara Morgane (born 1981), porn star
French poet Arthur Rimbaud died in Marseille in November 10, 1891.

Movies set in Marseille
37°2 le matin (1986)
À bout de souffle (1960)
Baise-moi (2000)
Comme un aimant (2000)
The French Connection (1971) and its sequel (1975)
Gomez & Tavarès (2003)
La Lune dans le caniveau (1983)
Marius (1931)
Marius et Jeannette (1997)
Pépé le Moko (1937)
Roselyne et les lions (1989)
Taxi (1998)
Taxi 2 (2000)
Taxi 3 (2003)
Trois places pour le 26 (1988)
Un, deux, trois, soleil (1993)