Shopping in Marseille

Marseille’s most interesting summer shopping is to be found at the local products and artisan market. The market - Marché des Croisiéristes - is held near the newly pedestrianised Old Port (Vieux Port), on Places Gabriel Péri and Général de Gaulle. You’ll find there all the Provençal stuff you could possibly hope for – edible, wearable, decorative plus lots of items you’ll bring home.

Marseille has few notable products of its own, unless you count the clunky savon-de-Marseille soap and devastatingly overrated navette biscuit. It does, however, have a flourishing fashion design sector, France’s best spice’n’souk area – and all the other shopping you’d expect of a major city.

Most of the key shopping streets are just south of La Canebière. Rue de Rome, Rue Paradise and Rue St Ferréol have the clothes shops, many of them pretty top-end. More general shopping clusters in the streets between the Opera House and the Préfecture. And then there is the brand new, €466 million Terrasses du Port shopping centre, right by the MuCEM, the final element of the rehab of this part of the port. British-built, it opened in May 2014 with 190 shops and services on five floors, plus two panoramic promenades.

But this entire shopping zone is quite compact. It includes Rue de la Tour, where Marseille’s own designers have their outlets, and the Galéries Lafayette department store is also nearby, just across La Canebière on Rue Bir Hakeim, surrounded by the Centre Bourse shopping centre. Antiques and objets d’art are best found in Rue Edmond Rostand.