Arriving at Marseilles’s Gare St Charles in the early hours of a balmy October night, the first marvel of the city that is pointed out to me — both proudly and affectionately — is a large, well-fed rat that pours itself into a nook in the stone wall of the station. ‘Welcome to Marseilles,’ says Oliver, my laconic host, pushing his bicycle along the street to avoid running into a trio of high-cheekboned Maghrebian hip-hop devotees. As they saunter past, deltoids rippling, bouncing fluidly and elegantly on their toes to some innate city beat, Oliver adds, ‘Also known as North North Africa.’
With a population of 850,000 (1.6 million within the greater city limits), Marseilles is France’s second largest city, dwarfed only by Paris. Both cities have a large Moroccan/Tunisian/Algerian contingent, but while in Paris immigrants end up in the banlieues, in Marseilles everyone gets piled into the centre. When it comes to atmosphere, even though it’s 660km from the capital, Marseilles is a million miles from safe, polished Le Ville Lumière (not to mention the other tourist towns of the Cote D’Azur: St Tropez, Monte Carlo, Cannes).
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