CITY

Marseille: City Flag, History and Identity

Marseille combines an unusually long city history with the open location on the Mediterranean Sea. The Vieux Port forms its historical reference point, while the modern commercial port developed further north. On the city flag, a light blue cross appears on a white background: a simple sign of a city whose history is marked by shipping and exchange.

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Marseille City Flag & Local History · supplied learning collection

Marseille at a glance

Name: Marseille
Country: France
Profile type: City
Greek name: Massalia
Date of establishment: Approximately 600 B.V. CH
Origin of the founders: Phocaea in Asia Minor
Historical Bay: lacydone
Ancient successor name: Massilia in Roman times
Port extension: From the 1840s north of the Vieux Port
Archaeological site: Port antique at the History Museum
Urban memorial: Founding legend of Protis and Gyptis

The Flag of Marseille

The cross reaches to the edges of the white cloth. Its arms are vertical and horizontal; it is therefore a straight cross and not a diagonal St. Andrew’s Cross. Unlike many other city flags, this representation requires neither lettering nor an additional coat of arms sign for recognition.

For the flag quiz, the combination of bright blue and white is especially important. The simple form must not be automatically read as proof of a certain founding legend. The Greek past of the city is historically documented, but does not in itself explain the origin of every subsequent urban emblem.

Marseille: Location and Territorial Role

Marseille is located in the south of France on a natural sea bay. The ancient port was built on the Lacydon, whose space remains recognizable today by the Vieux Port. Thus, the historic city centre has a direct connection to the water; the location is not a port function subsequently annexed to an inland city.

At Vieux Port, several layers of time meet: archaeological remains, the communal representation at the town hall and the architecture of the reconstruction. Trade and large ships later found new areas further north. Anyone who only looks at the old port on a map therefore only captures part of the maritime urban development.

Landscape, History and Culture

Greek sailors from Phocaea founded Massalia around 600 BCE. The protected location and connections to the hinterland favored the exchange. The current city name thus stands at the end of a long linguistic and political development, in which the Greek also followed a Roman epoch.

The story of Protis and Gyptis connects the founding of the city with a marriage between a Greek arrival and a local royal daughter. It belongs to the urban memory, but remains a founding legend. Archaeology and historical tradition answer questions other than a story that vividly tells an origin.

With the steamship traffic of the nineteenth century, the scale and technology of the port changed. From the 1840s, new port basins were built north of the Vieux Port. The extension shows how technical developments can shift not only workflows, but also the spatial order of an entire coastal city.

Port antique

The Port Antique makes the early port city visible in the ground. In connection with the History Museum, he conveys why the protected bay was so important for the first settlements. The place complements the current water area with an archaeological perspective on the long life of the port.

Town Hall at the Port

The town hall stands on the historic port and connects political city history with the maritime center. Its situation makes it understandable why government, commerce and public spaces grew close together here. The Vieux Port was for centuries at the same time economic area, place of arrival and stage of urban life.

Reconstruction at Vieux Port

The development on the Vieux Port also tells of the reconstruction after the destruction of the twentieth century. In the renovated house fronts, traditional materials and modern construction techniques were combined. Thus, today's portscape is neither an unchanged ancient ensemble nor exclusively a modern re-creation.