Continuing my series of posts on our Marseilles trip... this week, Notre Dame de la Garde. This is the city's most prominent land mark - you can't miss it. Anywhere you are in the city, you can see it towering above you. A bit like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Here it is, viewed from a distance between a line of boats at the Vieux Port (old port)...
It is a 19th Century basilica mounted atop a limestone hill called, naturally enough, la Garde. For the busy tourist, there are tourist buses that take you all the way to the top. But the real pilgrim treks his way up. Now Blandine is a devout Catholic and I love trekking up hills, and neither of us were in a particular hurry, so naturally we did it the hard way. As a compensation , you get a grand view of Marseilles and the seas surrounding it, as you climb. Here is a closer view as we neared it...
Marseilles viewed from la Garde in the setting sun
The dome of the basilica from the inside
Note the line of hanging boats... the maritime motif is everywhere. Marseilles, I need not remind you, is a port city.
