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from “Marseille is having a makeover, though there’s still lots of gritty charm”

by Robert V. Camuto, The Washington Post, 2010

In the past decade, France's second-largest city has undergone a dramatic makeover, accelerated by a high-speed train that now connects it to Paris in just over three hours. A bouillabaisse of European and North African immigrants, Marseille has evolved into a town that is young and cosmopolitan while keeping its gritty charm. It may also be the closest thing France has to a melting pot: the media have noted that it was one of the few French cities to avoid the widespread rioting that followed the accidental deaths in 2005 of two teenagers from immigrant families who were fleeing police in a Paris suburb.

New hotels and luxury apartments are sprouting along its waterfront; boutiques, restaurants and artists' studios have revived once seedy neighbourhoods. You can sense the change in the millions of dollars of public works projects underway in preparation for 2013, when Marseille takes its turn as Europe's Capital of Culture. And you can see it in the construction cranes at the Hotel-Dieu, the sprawling 18th-century landmark hospital being converted into a luxury hotel.

Yet despite the changes, Marseille's odd vibe remains. The local culture - which elevates soccer to a religion, drinking pasties (an anise-flavored liqueur) to ritual, local food specialties such as bouillabaisse to an art form and the local French-mangling dialect to a language of its own - isn't showing any signs of waning.