Touren · Marseille · City Hall
Hôtel de Ville de Marseille
Marseille's warm pink-and-ochre baroque town hall on the Quai du Port, built in the 1650s to 1670s. Its two floors were deliberately kept apart, and it was one of only three buildings on the north quay spared when the quarter was dynamited in 1943.
Über diesen Ort
The Hôtel de Ville is the baroque town hall of Marseille, built between 1653 and 1673 to designs by Gaspard Puget and Jean-Baptiste Méolans, and it has served as the seat of the city's government ever since. Its most curious feature is that the ground floor, a loggia for the port's merchants, was deliberately separated from the first-floor chamber of the aldermen who governed the city; the councillors reached their room not through the ground floor but by crossing from a separate building at the rear over a raised walkway. This arrangement made visible a new hierarchy imposed by King Louis XIV, who in the mid-seventeenth century reined in Marseille's independence and reorganised its port. In the winter of 1943, when German occupiers dynamited the entire north bank of the Old Port, the Hôtel de Ville was one of only three buildings spared, and it became the centrepiece of the post-war reconstruction.
Wissenswertes
- 1653 year — The foundation stone of the present town hall was laid
- 1673 year — The baroque building was completed, and it still houses the city government
- 3 buildings — Only this many on the north quay survived the 1943 dynamiting; this was one
📍 Quai du Port 54, 13002, Marseille