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Marseille

Bureau des Guides du GR2013

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Why it matters: this non-profit, co-founded in 2014 by Julie De Muer, Loic Magnant, Baptiste Lanaspeze and Alexandre Field, is the collective of artist-walkers behind the GR2013 – a 365 km waymarked trail created for Marseille-Provence European Capital of Culture 2013 that loops through 38 towns and 3,000 sq km of the metropolis. It exists to make the whole territory walkable and legible to the people who live in it, not to sell scenery. The guided walks are led by the artists, ecologists and urbanists who mapped the route, and they deliberately take in motorway edges, industrial zones and ravines alongside the hills. Tip: the walks are the point – check the programme before you go, and expect the peri-urban rather than the postcard.

Friche la Belle de Mai

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Why it matters: this 45,000 sq m former Seita tobacco factory has been run since 2007 as a SCIC – a cooperative where every member, from resident artists to the city, gets one vote – and it now houses 70 organisations and 400 artists while drawing 450,000 visitors a year. It is a whole quarter rather than a venue: six performance halls, 2,400 sq m of exhibition space, shared gardens, a bookshop, a creche, a skate playground and an 8,000 sq m rooftop terrace open in summer. Come for an exhibition, then eat at Les Grandes Tables and stay for the roof at sunset. Tip: the Jobin entrance has the ticket office, and much of the site is free to wander – check the day’s programme on arrival.

L’Apres M

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Why it matters: when the McDonald’s here closed in 2019 and made its 77 staff redundant, assistant manager and staff rep Kamel Guemari led former employees, neighbours and local associations in taking the building over during the March 2020 lockdown to hand out food parcels in a corner of the quartiers Nord that badly needed them. It runs today as fast social food – a working burger joint that doubles as a mutual-aid platform and exists to get people back into work – and the City of Marseille backed the purchase of the building in 2021 to make it permanent. Order a Maous Costo or a Faim de l’Espace. Closed Sundays, and it sits well north of the Vieux-Port out in the 14th, so go deliberately rather than hoping to pass by.

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