Marseille · Self-guided audio walk

Cours Julien: Street Art and Stairways

A short, dense walk through the painted quarter above Noailles.

5Stops
0.6 kmDistance
10+ minTime

Photo by Mike is Michi on Wikimedia Commons

Cours Julien is Marseille's open-air paint wall, one flight of painted steps above the Noailles market district. This short walk starts at the foot of the Escaliers du Cours Julien, whose eighty steps get a fresh monumental paint job almost every year, then climbs into the plateau of cafés, record shops and vintage stores around the square. You'll thread two of its mural-lined lanes, Rue Bussy l'Indien and Rue des Trois Rois, and finish on Place Jean Jaurès, the market square locals call La Plaine. Allow about an hour, a little longer if you stop for a coffee, a dig through the record crates or a game of pétanque.

Hear it on the street

Get the turn-by-turn audio guide in the app. The narration plays itself as you reach each stop, hands-free and offline.

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Stop by stop

The route

Interactive map of the route. The full stop list below works without it.

Must see

Photo by Mike is Michi on Wikimedia Commons

Escaliers du Cours Julien

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The painted stairway rising from cours Lieutaud to the Cours Julien plateau, repainted nearly every year.

You're at the foot of the Escaliers du Cours Julien, the eighty-step climb from cours Lieutaud to the Cours Julien plateau. The whole flight is one canvas, and it gets a fresh skin almost every year, so the colors under your feet depend on when you arrive. In 2023 a small team worked here across three nights, from seven in the evening to seven in the morning, turning the steps and their three landings into one giant blue, pink and red Vichy-check tablecloth. The habit began with a 2014 street art festival, and since then the staircase has worn a rainbow flag and an eye test chart, then a steady rotation of other designs.

Each repaint covers about 200 square meters and uses around 25 liters of paint, much of it applied along laser-projected lines. Climb slowly. Every landing changes the view, and the top drops you level with the café terraces of Cours Julien.

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≈1 min walk to the next stop

Must see

Photo by DC on Wikimedia Commons

Cours Julien

0:00

The pedestrian heart of the quarter, lined with café terraces, record shops and vintage stores, and home to a Wednesday farmers' market.

You're standing on Cours Julien, the pedestrian spine of the neighborhood and its main square. Trees shade a long run of café terraces, and between them sit record shops, vintage stores and small workshops. The place has not always looked like this. From the 1860s until about 1970 it was the city's wholesale fruit and vegetable market, and farmers from the surrounding villages brought their produce here each morning.

When the wholesalers left, artists and musicians moved into the empty ground floors in the 1980s, and the walls started filling with paint. The square still runs on a weekly clock: a farmers' market brings about thirty local producers here on Wednesday mornings, and a secondhand book market spreads across the square on the second Saturday of each month. A New York Times list once named the neighborhood among the coolest in the world, but the better proof is the evening, when musicians unpack their instruments and the terraces fill late into the night. If you want coffee, take it here.

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≈3 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by Boris Hadjur on Unsplash

Rue Bussy l'Indien

0:00

A short mural-lined lane off the square, where the walls get covered, buffed and covered again.

Rue Bussy l'Indien runs parallel to the square, and together with its neighbor Rue Pastoret it carries the densest layer of graffiti and stencils in the quarter. Look at the walls rather than the pavement: every surface, from roller shutters to doorways, gets covered, buffed and covered again. What you see today is a snapshot, not a permanent collection. A piece can last for years if nobody replaces it, or vanish within a week beneath a newer layer.

The painters treat the lane as a running conversation, and the freshest mark is always someone answering the one underneath. Local and visiting artists share the same walls, so the styles shift from block letters to cut stencils within a few meters. Small cafés and workshops sit at street level, and their awnings and signs get pulled into the same game.

Open in Google Maps

≈1 min walk to the next stop

Free preview ends here · stops 4 to 5 continue in the app

Rue des Trois Rois

The upper lane of the plateau, packed with small restaurants and studios and a constantly repainted set of walls.

in app

Place Jean Jaurès

The big market square locals call La Plaine, with a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday market and a Wednesday flower market.

in app

Good to know

Before you go

When is the Cours Julien market on?

The Cours Julien plateau holds a farmers' market on Wednesday, and Place Jean Jaurès, the square locals call La Plaine, holds its big market on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday with a flower market on Wednesday. The painted stairway from cours Lieutaud gets a new monumental paint job nearly every year.

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Provenance · last verified August 22, 2026

Built from the Wayside route itself: the stops, their order, and the walk between them.

Photo by Mike is Michi on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by DC on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo by Boris Hadjur on Unsplash

Photo by Chabe01 on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by Jorge Lascar on Openverse · CC BY 2.0

Photo by Olena Ilnytska on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by Irma2403 on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by Kaja Sariwating on Unsplash

Photo by kallerna on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0