When a place becomes a meme, you know it is having a moment. This is what is happening to Marseille, which found its name plastered on a satirical Instagram account this week. “‘Mate was finkin’ of goin’ Marseille? Apparently it’s poppin’ off!?’,” read the caption on the viral Socks House Meeting fashion account that satirises the absurdities of trends, usually with an eye to London’s cultural niches but with a foothold in wider British internet humour.
It was accompanied by a picture of the type of lifestyle and fashion staples that a certain kind of traveller might enjoy while in the southern French city, including a skinny Vogue cigarette, on-trend wraparound sunglasses and a bottle of Terre d’Hermès eau de toilette.
On Instagram, influencers, style writers and creative types are posting snaps of the yellow-and-white-striped sun loungers of the beachside restaurant and guesthouse Tuba Club, which was founded in 2021 by a self-described “friends collective” of Marseillais locals. Or they are sharing picture of times spent enjoying a pan bagnat at Cécile Food Club, a cafe opened by the Texan model Erin Wasson and her Marseillais husband last year. On TikTok, Marseille is having what Hannah Bennett, the head of travel on the platform, would call “a moment” – they have seen a 100% increase in the number of posts related to the city. A certain algorithmic chemistry has anointed France’s second city with its seal of approval.
Away from the internet, Marseille’s popularity as a destination for British tourists is backed up by Ryanair, which operates 46 flights each week to the city from Bristol, Edinburgh, London and Manchester, and has reported strong demand for flights there this summer. Searches with British Airways Holidays for trips to Marseille have steadily increased over 2024. According to the France Tourism Development Agency, in 2023, British travellers to the city were second only to the French in terms of global overnight stays, buoyed up by the Rugby World Cup being held there.
France’s oldest city, and its most multicultural – immigrant communities include those from Armenia, Italy, Spain and north African countries such as Algeria – has long been overlooked. Or maligned because of a perception that it was dangerous – the idea of Marseille as a crime-ridden city was so recurrent in film and television that a crime-subgenre was dubbed “Marseille Noir”. At another time it was perhaps best known by Brits as the city in which Chris Waddle and his mullet lived and played football.
The 34-year-old fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus, who is being touted as the leading contender to take the top job at the luxury label Chanel, could be thanked for some of this rise in attention. Having grown up around the city, he has hosted numerous shows in the surrounding areas. In 2017, he published Marseille je t’aime, a book in which he collaborated with 15 artists on their interpretations of the city.
Earlier this year, Chanel, more usually associated with manicured Parisian style, brought its cruise collection to the roof atop Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s 337-apartment “vertical village”. “If Marseille is unexpected, that’s good. We don’t want to be stuck. We need to take risks if we want to show that Chanel is for everyone,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, before the show.
Its modernist architecture is a draw for many visitors. It was to see the Le Corbusier block that the interior designer and Barbican resident Tom Morris visited this summer from his Provence holiday home. Unlike a lot of the south of France, which, he said, “can be expensive, and a little too overdone and chi-chi for my tastes”, Marseille “has just the right amount of edge while being surrounded by incredibly stunning landscapes … I think that is perhaps why it’s coming back as an in-demand place to go.” Also, he noted, “it’s a 90-minute flight and you land slap-bang in the middle of the city. It’s akin to Málaga in that way, another slightly ignored port city to visit.”
In recent years, buzzy new restaurants and natural wine bars have been opening by the douzaine and it is in part down to its hospitality scene that it is, according to the anonymous meme merchant behind Socks Meeting House, having this moment. “It’s basically just part of the rotational trending locations, nothing more exciting, nothing less simple,” they said, name-checking other cities that have had their moment in the sun, such as Nice, Naples and Lisbon. “They all link to a culinary east London atypical thing of ‘oh look we do oil-drowned anchovies and pan con tomate for £18 each’,” they said. “Combine that with a hyper trend click-based mentality of people going on TikTok and seeing ‘come with me to the top five best small plate restaurants in (insert hype location)’.”
In the vein of other cities seeing an increase in tourism and accompanying gentrification, not everyone is benefiting or happy, and earlier this year, against a backdrop of rising rents and high poverty rates, activists staged protests against Airbnb. It has been a summer of discontent around tourism more widely and, as with many other places enjoying and suffering a surfeit of visitors, it is putting some measures in place to control it. Summer access to the nearby Calanques national park, for instance, is now regulated through a free reservation scheme.