MuCEM and the Joliette Waterfront

Fort Saint-Jean

The 17th-century fortress guarding the entrance to the Vieux-Port, now the free outdoor half of the MuCEM.

You're standing inside Fort Saint-Jean, above the narrow channel where the Vieux-Port meets the sea. The fort has watched this entrance since the late 1600s, when Louis XIV ordered it rebuilt, partly to defend Marseille and partly to point cannons at the city if it revolted. Walk the chemin de ronde and you follow the same loop the soldiers patrolled, 20 metres above the water. Look for the two towers: the square one is the Tour du Roi René from the 1400s, and the round Tour du Fanal once carried a fire at its top to guide ships in.

In 1944 the fort was serving as a German ammunition depot when an accidental explosion tore through it. The outer spaces you're walking now are free, including the Jardin des Migrations, a terraced garden of Mediterranean plants. When you're ready, take the footbridge that runs 115 metres over the sea to the dark latticed building ahead, the MuCEM.

MuCEM, 7 promenade Robert Laffont

The 2013 museum of Mediterranean civilizations, wrapped in a dark concrete lattice on the J4 esplanade.

This is the MuCEM, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, opened in 2013 in a building by the architect Rudy Ricciotti. The facade is one thin shell of dark concrete, pierced into a lattice that shades the walkways behind it. The open-air walkways that wrap the building are free to walk, like the fort you just left. A ticket into the galleries costs 11 euros, or 7.50 euros reduced, and one ticket also covers the exhibition rooms back inside Fort Saint-Jean.

A family ticket is 18 euros. The museum's subject is the long conversation between the lands around this sea: food, faith, migration, the ways people trade, mourn and celebrate. You don't have to go inside to feel the point. The building stands at the edge of the water with the fort behind you and the industrial port to the north, which is exactly the line this walk follows.

When you're ready, head next door to the Villa Méditerranée.