This universality of the collections, a legacy of the very rich history of the oldest city in France, allows an opening to the world and the Mediterranean while highlighting the cultural heritage of Marseille and the province.

The Museum of Fine Arts, installed since 1873 in the Palais Longchamp, benefits from a collection initiated thanks to revolutionary seizures, then certain state deposits. Rich with more than 6,000 paintings, sculptures and drawings from the 16th to the 19th century, from French, Italian as well as Dutch and Flemish schools. It also preserves masterpieces by Provençal artists who notably revolutionized landscape painting even before Impressionism.

The Cantini Museum

welcomes the collection of modern arts and pioneers of photography with major works representative of movements and personalities influenced or not by the sun of the southern shores. They especially preserve, among other things, a very beautiful Fauvist and surrealist ensemble, with unique pieces such as the Marseille game made in 1941, the Villa Air Bel.

Focused in part on narrative figuration, the Nice school, Support Surface and the New Realists, the collection of

The contemporary art museum [MAC] asserts its identity and particularity by exploring various artistic media from the 1960s to the present day. The museum opens onto a contemporary sculpture garden and has enjoyed a great reputation since its creation in 1994.

History Museum recounts the Greek founding and evolution of the oldest city in France through the Roman, medieval and modern periods until the 21st century. Just like the archaeological site of the first ancient city port, the Roman Docks Museum recalls the port activity of the city between the 6th century BC and the 4th century AD.

Grobet-Labadié Museum et the museum of decorative arts of earthenware and fashion

with its decor and historical architecture, it serves as a setting for the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy of Provence and Marseillaise, and for its artistic, eclectic taste in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first is a mansion housing an abundant collection of furniture, sculptures, paintings, drawings, tapestries and earthenware from the 13th to the 19th centuries, in a private mansion, following in the footsteps of the great houses bequeathed by their owners such as the Frick collection in New York, the Wallace collection and the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris.

In the heart of a magnificent park, the 18th century countryside bastide des Borély offers a collection of 1,500 pieces of French and Provencal foreign ceramics, as well as more than 7,000 costumes and fashion accessories from the 1920s to the present day. The only evidence of the bastides that inhabited the Provençal countryside before the urban boom of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the museum has the ambition to draw a thread linking the French genius of the 18th century with the most contemporary design in permanent or temporary arrangements, offering carte blanche to the most promising artists of today.

The collections of Egyptian and classical antiquities (Rome, Greece and the Middle East) of Mediterranean Archeology Museum offers an overview of ancient Mediterranean civilizations and dialogues in the heart of the Center de la Vieille Charité with the universality of the museum’s collection of African, Oceanian and Amerindian art, benefiting from the most important collections of African and Oceanian primitive arts and popular arts of Mexico, outside the capital. In the neighborhoods of the basket, the Accoules courtyard

offers both historical and fun exhibitions for children. In a unique way in the world, each exhibition is designed with original works on a major theme of art history, with multiple educational activities and a complete booklet that will delight young and old alike.

Xavier Rey director of Marseille museums