A history museum of Marseille | Marseille Tourism

An interactive museum

Located two steps away from the ‘Vieux-port’ (old port), where Marseille was founded by the Phoceans, the history museum houses- on around 3500sqm- the site of the antique port as well as a permanent exposition, but also a space for temporary expositions, a documentation centre and an auditorium.
To discover these 26 centuries of history, the museum put in place numerous multimedia tools to allow visitors to dive into the deep of the sea-front city’s history. An app was launched to discover certain location and monuments of the city as they were during the Antiquity and the Middle ages, thanks to your smartphone or tablet. The technology of augmented reality allows you to be completely immersed while enjoying accurate reconstruction and have access to numerous historical information.

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Archaeological remains

You will be able to admire the biggest flotilla of ancient ships in the world. Furthermore, the ‘Malaval’ church dating back to the 5th century and discoveries during an archaeological search permitted us to better understand the start of Christianity in eastern Europe and to reconstruct the making of holy oil. The Cosquer cave testifies of human occupation in Marseille way before its founding in 600 before J.C. Thousands of paintings and engravings decorate that cave inhabited more than 27000 years ago.

Did you know ?

Closed for a few years, the history museum was entirely renovated in 2013, years during which Marseille was the capital of European culture. That same year, the Mucem (Museum of European civilisations and of the Mediterranean) saw the light of day.

Access to the garden of the remains

The garden of the remains houses archaeological remain of the antique port of marseille.

It was during work carried out in 1967 for the construction of a shopping centre in the heart of Marseille called “Centre Bourse”, that the remains were discovered. Numerous Greek fortifications, funerary enclosures as well as part of the ancient port were uncovered. This necessitated the classification of the site as a historical monument of about 10,000 m². The garden that can be visited today has been laid out in such a way as to highlight the various remains, the results of one of the most important post-war urban excavations carried out in France.
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Access to the garden of the remains

The garden of the remains houses archaeological remain of the antique port of Marseille.

It was during work carried out in 1967 for the construction of a shopping centre in the heart of Marseille called “Centre Bourse”, that the remains were discovered. Numerous Greek fortifications, funerary enclosures as well as part of the ancient port were uncovered. This necessitated the classification of the site as a historical monument of about 10,000 m². The garden that can be visited today has been laid out in such a way as to highlight the various remains, the results of one of the most important post-war urban excavations carried out in France.