Marseille and the Chateau d’If

In the south of France on the Mediterranean coast, Marseille is France’s second largest city after Paris and by far the oldest city in the country. There are paleolithic cave paintings that date back some 30,000 years, but the city proper was founded by Greeks in 600 BC as the trading port of Massida.

The city came under Roman rule with the rise of Julius Caesar, followed by the Visigoths and eventually Frankish king from the 5th century on. Marseille did not succumb to Parisian rule quietly, however. It revolted in 1262, several times in the 15th century, and naturally during the French Revolution. So enthusiastic were the 500 Marseillan volunteers sent up to Paris to defend the new revolutionary government that their marching song, La Marseillaise, became and is still today the national anthem of France.

Rendered infamous by the fictional prisoner Edmond Dantes in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Marseille is also home to the island fortress/prison, the Chateau d’If. The story of how it came to be built is an interesting one.

King Emmanuel I of Portugal sent Pope Leo X a rhinoceros as a gift, an exotic creature completely unknown on the European mainland. Alas, the ship carrying the rhino shipwrecked on the island of If. Upon hearing of this, the French king Francois I was unable to resist curiosity and came down from Paris to Marseille to see this creature for himself, and after visiting the island also decided that it would be the perfect location for a fortress to protect the port city. As a result, the Chateau d’If was built between 1524-31. (The rhinoceros, on the other hand, died on the island and never did make it to its intended recipient.)

The fortress never saw military action, but due to the dangerous ocean currents surrounding it became France’s Alcatraz, the ideal isolated and escape-proof prison. And in this role it excelled, quickly becoming France’s most feared and famous prison, primarily used for political and religious prisoners and achieving international fame with the release of Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo. Fiction aside, no prisoner has ever escaped the Chateau d’If.

(The first four images are of Marseille coming in to the port. The rest are of or on the Island of If.)