Vieux-Port de Marseille

Founded around 600 BC by Greek sailors from Phocaea as Massalia, Marseille is France's oldest city, its Vieux-Port a working harbour for two and a half millennia. In 1792, during the Revolution, 500 volunteers from Marseille marched to Paris singing a rousing war song—which Parisians promptly nicknamed 'La Marseillaise', later France's national anthem. The port endured the Great Plague of 1720, which killed roughly half the city, and was scarred anew in 1943 when the Nazis dynamited the old harbour quarter, deporting and displacing thousands. Overlooked by the golden Virgin of Notre-Dame de la Garde, the Vieux-Port remains the beating heart of the Mediterranean city.