A great quote about Marseille

"If Avignon is Roman, Marseilles is Byzantine. It belongs to the Levantine end of the Mediterranean, where the races of three continents blend--a hybrid city. Its appearance is curiously non-European. The great cathredral which raises its cluster of domes near the harbour, and the church of Notre Dame du Garde which crowns a solitary crag like a pinnacle, are both modern erections, but they are purely Byzantine in style. They speak of a fatalism that has nothing in common with the eager questioning of Gothic. In the streets the swarthy races of Asia and Africa jostle Europe, and the turban and red fez are constantly to be seen. Marseilles is one with Tyre and Sidon. The Phoenicians and the Saracens had left indelible traces. It is still Europe's great gateway to the East."

From Barbary--The Romance of the Nearest East, by A. MacCallum Scott, published in 1921.