Cheers to local shops, many sights in Marseille
Marseille’s sprawling harbour, Le Vieux Port, is the picturesque heart of the city. At Chez Laurette, every item is a product of France. Le Capian bar pours out numerous Provençal products.
Start your two-stage ethnobloat with pizza at Chez Etienne, a lively tile and timber restaurant founded by Sicilians in 1943. Crossing the street, you arrive in Morocco at Ahwash, a stylish living-roomlike restaurant and boutique. 10 p.m. Drink to that Formerly a hospital, the grandiose 18th-century building holding the Intercontinental Marseille — Hotel Dieu now offers sedation in the form of wines, beers, spirits (notably gin) and cocktails, courtesy of Le Capian bar. A soaring space outfitted with plush couches and carpets, the establishment pours out numerous Provençal products. Saturday 11 a.m. Marseille à la mode
When your shopping list includes a concrete rendering of Yoda’s head and socks embossed with erotic cartoons, visit Chez Laurette. After working in Paris for Marc Jacobs, Chez Laurette’s owner returned home to southern France and opened a concept store where every item is made in France. Nearby, Le Diable Méridien will accessorize you in French leather, from watches by Les Partisanes to satchels from Bleu de Chauffe. 1p.m. Catch of the day Run by a tattooed young staff and playfully overdecorated with nautical-kitsch decor, La Boite à Sardine at first seems a silly take on the traditional seafood shack. But the dailychanging menu will please purists: all is fresh, and the cooking is mostly straightforward, with occasional embellishments. A winter-afternoon visit found oysters, sea urchin, calamari and sole on the menu, along with cold crunchy-pink shrimp and slabs of thick bonito, panfried in a breadcrumb crust. 3 p.m. Much to inhale Don’t insult Friche La Belle de Mai by calling it an “art museum.” Sprawling across the vast grounds of a 19th-century tobacco works, the hodgepodge of historical and contemporary buildings might best be described as a multi-space, polypurpose cafe-restaurant-barbookshop-skatepark-playground-graffiti-gallery-concert hall-nursery-school and sometime yoga workshop that also happens to host multiple rotating art exhibitions. 6 p.m. Concrete and sea The trademark innovations are all there: rows of vertical pilotis that lift the concrete apartment building off the ground; horizontal bands of windows; panels of bright primary colours to enliven the grey exterior. Massive and modernist, the so-called Cité Radieuse could only come from the forward-looking mind of Le Corbusier — although, the Swiss architect was looking forward in the 1940s and ’50s, when Brutalism was futuristic. 8 p.m. King of the hill Someone must rename Sépia. The moniker evokes a colourless and static scene, frozen in the past. This new, lively restaurant is none of those things. The chef, Paul Langlère, has elevated a disused snack bar into one of Marseille’s hottest tables. 10:30 p.m. Behind the glass door
As night falls in Marseille, three friends approach the darkened storefront of a cheesy souvenir shop, fumble with the door handle and vanish inside. Minutes later, more do the same. On and on, couples and small crowds arrive, giddy to be creeping into a closed shop. This is Carry Nation, a bar so secret that one must register online for entry instructions. Sunday 11 a.m. Almost deserted islands
Astrange, barren and (almost) uninhabited world hides 30 minutes from Marseille’s Vieux Port: the Frioul Archipelago. Blasted by eons of wind and waves, the four small islands have eroded into rocky, chalkwhite lumps of cliffs, ravines, coves and outcroppings where perhaps 100 intrepid locals make their home.