Marseille is sun-blasted, salty, and unmistakably itself. Founded by Greek sailors twenty-six centuries ago and shaped by every wave of migration since, France’s oldest city stacks its hills with faded ochre and terracotta, fills its markets with the sounds of North Africa and the Mediterranean, and slows its afternoons over pastis beneath the golden Virgin of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. The city climbs from the Old Port into the hills and drops straight into the sea, close enough that a morning at the fish market can end with an afternoon swim in a limestone calanque. Here, the rough edges aren’t a flaw to fix — they’re the whole character.