Photo Gallery Marseille Gets a Makeover
Marseille is France's second-largest city. The European Union has designated it the 2012 "European Capital of Culture."
To prepare for this opportunity to showcase itself, city and private officials are pumping hundreds of millions into the city. This photo shows the CeReM exhibition hall under construction.
Here, another photo of the CeReM exhibition hall under construction. Millions of euros have flowed into renovating neglected museums, crumbling industrial structures, run-down residential areas, waterfront areas and docks.
Marseille's Palais Longchamp: With more than 400 events, exhibitions and concerts, Marseille will showcase not only itself, but the entire region of Provence.
But to the chagrin of many residents, much of the funding has gone to showy architectural projects, such as the Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM), shown here in an artistic depiction, and...
...the horseshoe-shaped CeReM exhibition hall, which will feature a gravity-defying structure. But funding is also going to street-theater groups, cabaret stages and popular culture.
Marseille's main asset is its geographical location. Lying on the Mediterranean means that its cultural debut will include elements from its North African neighbors. But its cultural program of artistic creations and happenings for average citizens will also integrate elements from some 100 surrounding communities.
Baptiste Lanaspeze numbers among Marseille's "walking artists," who conceptualize walking as a form of performance art.
They have designed the "Grand Route 2013," a 260-kilometer (160-mile) course through open spaces, abandoned factory grounds and deserted commercial zones far-removed from the usual tourist stops. The meandering path through the urban wasteland surrounding Marseille numbers among the most imaginative projects in the city.
Lanaspeze and his friends are still marking out their "urban walking path" and are intent on reclaiming suppressed history and forgotten terrain along the age-old routes running through the city's surrounding regions. "We conceive of our project as an open-air museum," Lanaspeze says. "The path is the work of art itself."
