Musée d’Histoire de Marseille & More

I had a bit of a lazy morning in Marseille today. I got a slightly late start and visited only sights close to my hotel. I spent the largest part of the morning in the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille (Marseille History Museum). I bookended that with a small archaeological park and a church.

Jardin des Vestiges

The Jardin des Vestiges, which translates to Garden of Ruins, is a small archaeological park with ruins from Marseille’s Greek and then Roman periods.

I’m a bit confused as to what this sight is called. My walking tour app and a couple of other sources I found, including the tourism office website, call it “Jardin des Vestiges.” But a web search for Jardin des Vestiges also found a page from the official Musées de Marseille website that calls the same sight “Le Port antique.”

Most of the ruins there are from around the old Roman port, in place from the first to the sixth century CE, including the stone walls that lined the port.

There are also ruins of an old portal and other buildings. Signage at the site provides information in both French and English.

It’s quite a small park, with only a few ruins, so it doesn’t warrant spending a lot of time wandering around it, particularly when it starts drizzling, as it did when I was there.

One of my guidebooks said that, to visit the Jardin des Vestiges, you have to buy a ticket at the ticket office of the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille. That wasn’t true today. And I have my doubts that it ever is.

The Musée d’Histoire de Marseille is immediately behind the Jardin des Vestiges. To get to the former, you have to walk through the latter.

There is a tiny, freestanding office by the entrance to the archaeological park, but they told me it was free and waved me in. The office didn’t project the outward appearance of having the capacity to sell tickets.

Musée d’Histoire de Marseille

There is a ticket desk just inside the entrance of the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille. To visit the museum, I had to stop there and get a free ticket, which I had to present at a couple of places inside. To be clear, it wasn’t free only for seniors. It was free for everyone.

Why is that a thing here? As I noted in previous posts, I ran into that elsewhere on this trip. What’s the point of insisting on paper tickets when admission is free for everyone?

Oh, well. C’est la vie, je suppose.

Not only is the museum free, but it also loans, for free, audio guides that include English. That was sort of helpful for an anglophone, such as me.

I say “sort of helpful” for a few reasons. For one thing, almost all of the descriptive signage in the museum was entirely in French. But, here and there, there were a few signs that offered both French and English. However, they were very rare.

So, you would think, an audio guide that offered English would provide a valuable service for an anglophone who doesn’t speak enough French to understand much in that language. Not nothing. But not much.

You would think that, but the audioguides at Musée d’Histoire de Marseille don’t work like the ones I’ve experienced in other museums. In other museums, there are numbers beside the most important items on display. (The percentage of the museum’s displayed collection that has audio guide commentaries varies among museums.) You enter that number and listen to an often scholarly narrative about the displayed item.

At Musée d’Histoire de Marseille, on the other hand, there are no audio guide commentaries associated with individual items. Instead, there are video display screens in each section of the museum. The videos on them have French soundtracks, but if you select “English” on the audio guide, point the control pack of the audio guide at a red dot beside the screen, and press a button, then an English translation comes through the earpiece synchronized with the French commentary.

The format of the videos is common for most of them. When an important personage could be identified for the period covered in that section of Musée d’Histoire de Marseille, the video starts with a very brief first-person account allegedly by that person. It then switches to a modern scholar who tells more about the period and, in general, the items in that section, and often about a few of the specific pieces.

At least, that’s the way it is supposed to work.

Some of the screens didn’t have any red dots. Some had some formerly red dots that had been whited out because they weren’t working. One had a red dot, but there was a sign saying “NO ENGLISH.” A couple had red dots, but the audio guide just didn’t work there.

After running into a couple that didn’t work and thinking it was something I did wrong, I found an attendant and asked her, “Parlez-vous anglais?” She nodded her head in the affirmative. I pointed to the audio guide and told her that it wasn’t working at some of the screens.

In response, she, en français, started to give me general instructions for using the audio guide, which I already knew and had performed correctly at some of the displays. I stopped her and said, “ne marche pas,” and pointed at one of the screens where I had a problem.

She understood what I was saying and replied, “de temps en temps, il est fermé.” I understood that as “from time to time, it’s closed.” But then she remembered she was talking to an anglophone and said, “closed.” When she said “closed,” she crossed her hands back and forth over each other to make sure I got the point.

Okay. Whining session over.

I learned from one of the signs at the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille that had an English translation that Marseille, or at least what’s now Marseille, has an exceptionally long history. There is evidence of human settlements in the area dating back to the Middle Paleolithic period, 60,000 BCE. Other sites date from 27,000 to 10,000 BCE. And other artifacts show evidence of more advanced societies in the 9th to the 6th centuries, and those societies carried on in the area.

The items on display at the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille are archaeological finds from around what’s now Marseille, dating from at least 500 BCE and up to a few centuries ago. Artifacts include the remnants of some Greek-era and Roman-era wood boats, pottery, statuary, architectural fragments, statues, burial items and more.

There was also a temporary photograph exhibit at the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille when I was there. It displayed photographs of Marseille and the people of Marseille that came from the collection of a family that spans three generations of photographers, the Detaille family. The dates the photographs were taken ranged from the late 19th century to quite recently.

The exhibit also included a display of some old cameras.

Église of Saint-Ferréol les Augustins

After leaving the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille, I visited the Église of Saint-Ferréol les Augustins. It’s a smallish church across the street from the Vieux Port.

Église of Saint-Ferréol les Augustins was dedicated in 1542, but the vaulted ceiling wasn’t completed until 1588. I got that information from my walking tour app. It didn’t say what was overhead from 1542 until 1588. Was it open to the sky? Was there a temporary roof? I am ignorant about these sorts of things, but I assume it’s the latter. Otherwise, for 46 years, I imagine that the parishioners and priests would spend most of their time praying for sun and warm weather. I know I would if I were into praying.

The church is quite attractive. There is that vaulted and ribbed ceiling that’s now in place. Over the altar, there is a ribbed half-dome. There are old paintings in each of the small side chapels along both sides of the Église of Saint-Ferréol les Augustins. What look like old stained glass windows sit just a little below the ceiling.

As old as the church is, it also has some thoroughly modern touches. I don’t know if they’re on every day, but today, bright pink lights lit up and highlighted the area of the atar and its ribbed dome.

In each of the side chapels, there is another stained glass window. However, those are much more recent than the ones close to the ceiling. They displayed flowing patterns rather than religious themes. Signs near them dated the side-chapel stained glass windows to 2015.

Bouillabaisse

When I left Église of Saint-Ferréol les Augustins, it was pouring rain. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been bitterly cold and snowing; I left Toronto on this trip to escape that. Or it could have been pouring boiling oil, which fortunately rarely happens to me.

But a drenching rain was bad enough. By then, it was about the beginning of what passes for an early lunchtime here, about 12:30. Despite having my umbrella, plodding around in the drenching rain didn’t appeal to me. So I found a nearby restaurant for lunch.

There is a law in Marseille, I think unwritten, that says that you have to have bouillabaisse at least once while you’re here. Bouillabaisse, a delicious fish soup with chunks of fish and potatoes in a thick, creamy broth, is the signature dish of Marseille.

I had it the last time I was in Marseille, but not on this trip until today. So I thought it was time. The nearby restaurant I found, and a couple of others around it, have bouillabaisse on their menus.

You’re probably wondering why, if I enjoy it, I don’t have it more often while in Marseille. The answer is that I believe it’s overpriced. I think restaurants jack up the price because they know tourists will feel the need to order it at least once, no matter what the price. As much as I enjoy it, I don’t think it’s worth paying the premium more than once per visit to Marseille.

But today was the day. And it was very tasty.

When you order bouillabaisse, they bring you a bowl of dried-out slices of French bread and a small dish of thick garlic sauce. I don’t know what’s in the garlic sauce other than garlic, but it’s a pumpkin-orange colour. There’s also often a small dish of grated cheese.

The dried bread is so hard that you’d probably chip a tooth if you tried to eat it in that state. Fortunately, you’re not supposed to. The custom is to top two or three slices of bread with the sauce and dunk them in the soup before eating them. I don’t know if I was supposed to, but I left them in the broth for a bit before eating them so they’d be nice and soft, and flavourful. I inconsistently alternated between eating the soup, including the fish and potato chunks, and eating the bread slices. When I finished the dunked slices, I slathered up some more with the garlic sauce and placed them in the remaining soup. I repeated this until I finished the bouillabaisse, which made for a fulfilling lunch.

(I know the bread thing is not a part of the custom solely at the specific restaurant I chose. I had a fish soup as an appetizer for dinner once on this trip at another restaurant. It was essentially bouillabaisse broth, without the fish and potato chunks. They brought the same dried bread and garlic sauce for the soup there, with the same dunking instructions.)