The Bouches-du-Rhône is the department of Marseille and Roman Provence, a region of rocky inlets, agricultural plains and limestone massifs where the Mediterranean has defined the horizon for millennia. Marseille, France’s second-largest city and the oldest in the country, founded by the Greeks of Phocaea in 600 BC, is the capital of a department with many faces.
Les Baux-de-Provence, a medieval village in ruins perched on a spur of the Alpilles, gave its name to bauxite — an aluminium ore discovered at its feet in the 19th century — and is one of the most visited sites in Provence. The Château d’If, an island fortress off the coast of Marseille immortalised by Alexandre Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo; Tarascon, with its royal castle of the Dukes of Anjou reflected in the Rhône; Gardanne; Peyrolles-en-Provence…
Aix-en-Provence, the former capital of the County of Provence, whose court of the Dukes of Anjou was one of the most brilliant of the 15th century, shines with its fountains, its mansions and its international opera festival, which makes it one of the cultural capitals of the Mediterranean summer.