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Car Hire Marseille Airport

Marseille Airport is 18 miles (28 km) northwest of the centre of the city of Marseille. Taxis are available 24 hours a day, with a surcharge at night. There is a regular bus service to Gare St. Charles in the centre of Marseille town. From Gare St. Charles it is a short taxi ride to most destinations in the city. Buses leave Marseille airport terminal from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. every 20 minutes, and when flights arrive at other times.

Two information desks welcome you in Marseille airport at :
- Domestic arrivals Hall 4
- International arrivals Hall 1

7 days-a-week, 365 days-a-year, reception staff will advise you on flight times ( arrivals and departures ), connecting flights and the various services available at Marseille airport.

The most renowned and populated city in France after Paris, Marseille has – like the capital – prospered and been ransacked over the centuries. It has lost its privileges to sundry French kings and foreign armies, recovered its fortunes, suffered plagues, religious bigotry, republican and royalist Terror and had its own Commune and Bastille-storming. It was the presence of so many Marseillaise Revolutionaries marching from the Rhine to Paris in 1792 which gave the Hymn of the Army of the Rhine its name of La Marseillaise , later to become the national anthem.

Today, it’s an undeniable fact that Marseille is a deprived city, not particularly beautiful architecturally, and with acres of grim 1960s housing estates. Yet Marseille is a wonderful place to visit – a real, down-to-earth yet cosmopolitan port city with a trading history going back over 2500 years. The people of Marseille are gregarious and generous.

Marseille is divided into sixteen arrondissements which spiral out from the focal point of the city, the Vieux Port . Due north lies the old town, Le Panier , site of the original Greek settlement of Massalia. The wide boulevard leading from the head of the Vieux Port, La Canebière is the central east-west axis of Marseille town. The Centre Bourse and the little streets of quartier Belsunce border Marseille to the north, while the main shopping streets lie to the south. The main north-south axis is rue d’Aix , becoming cours Belsunce then rue de Rome, av du Prado and finally boulevard Michelet . The lively, youngish quarter around place Jean-Jaurès and the trendy cours Julien lie to the east of rue de Rome. From the headland west of the Vieux Port, the Corniche heads south past the city’s most favoured residential districts towards the beaches and promenade nightlife of the Plage du Prado.

Covering 240 km2, Marseille is twice as large as Paris. Indeed, it gathers many small villages – 111 to be precise – that joined along the years. They represent the many districts of the city we know today.

Marseille is not an easy town to discover : it takes time. If you are in a hurry, there are still a few museums and monuments to visit but you must keep in mind that the main charm in Marseille is. Marseille itself with its inhabitants, its smells and its exceptional location between the mountains and the sea.

Marseille’s main thoroughfare is called La Canabiere and stretches eastwards from the Vieux Port (Old Port). Make sure to stroll around the old port of Marseille where ships have docked for more than 26 centuries and where the atmosphere, spirit, and charm of the city is at its most tangible. Climb up to the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, a huge Romano-Byzantine basilica 1km south of the old port. Erected between 1853 and 1864, it stands on a hilltop and provides breathtaking views over Marseille. Two museums well worth visiting are the Centre de la Vieille Charite where exhibits are housed in a workhouse and hospice dating back to the 17th century and the Musee d’Histoire de Marseille which gives a history of the city. Take a ferry out to the mysterious Chateau d’If which lies on an island 3.5 kilometres west of the entrance to the old port. The 16th century fortress-turned-prison featured in Alexandre Dumas’ classic work of fiction “The Count of Monte Cristo”