La Canebière , the broad boulevard that runs for about a kilometre down to the port, is the undisputed hub of the town, its name taken from the hemp ( canabé ) that once grew here and provided the raw materials for the town's thriving rope-making trade. Fashioned originally with the Champs-Élysées in mind, La Canebière is a more patchwork affair of hotels, cafés and shops, neatly providing a division between the moneyed southern quartiers and the ramshackle quartier Belsunce to the north - an extraordinary, dynamic, mainly Arab area and a great trading ground. Hi-fis, suits and jeans from France and Germany are traded alongside spices, cloth and metalware from across the Mediterranean on flattened cardboard boxes in the streets - and not a French middleman in sight.

One block west, the Centre Bourse provides a stark contrast in a fiendish giant hypermall of noise, air-conditioning and over-lighting - useful, nevertheless, for mainstream shopping. Behind it is the Jardin des Vestiges , where the ancient port extended, curving northwards from the present quai des Belges. Excavations have revealed a stretch of the Greek port and bits of the city wall with the base of three square towers and a gateway, dated to the second or third century BC. In the Centre Bourse complex, the Musée d'Histoire de Marseille (Mon-Sat noon-7pm; free) presents the rest of the finds, including a third-century wreck of a Roman trading vessel. Further along La Canebière, where it crosses place de la Bourse, is the Musée de la Marine (Wed-Sun 10am-6pm; 12F/¬1.83), housed on the ground floor of the Neoclassical stock exchange and filled with intricate models and paintings of ships on the high seas.