Marseille? Moi?

For the past three years, after I went for the first time, I have been telling everyone I know to visit Marseille. Here’s my elevator pitch, which usually sells people. It’s a city that combines Brooklyn (young creative types and cocktail bars), Miami (turquoise water and a vibrant immigrant mix), and Paris (attention to detail and great bread). Did I mention it has the weather of L.A. but not the aggressively twee energy of Aix or the hordes of tourists in Saint-Tropez?

- BY MARISA MELTZER

“A lot of Parisians moved there during Covid,” my friend Elsa, who grew up in Marseille, tells me. She has lived in New York forever but visits a few times a year, via a deeply pleasant high-speed train ride from Paris. She explains that while it’s the oldest city in France (about 2,600 years), Marseille has gone through a renaissance.

Take Sarah Espeute. The designer of the home goods line Oeuvres Sensibles grew up not far away, in Arles, and went to Paris for school, but ended up moving to Marseille for the quality of life. She made trompe l’oeil pillows and curtains and tablecloths for herself, and by 2021 she had started a brand. Stop by her shop for a set of napkins embroidered with cutlery, or a tablecloth embroidered with wine, bouquets of flowers, and whole fish. Just down the street is the workshop for the line Azur, where Lisa Favreau and Lisa Guedel-Dolle make little plissé frocks that are hand-pleated and sewn in Marseille.