From the plage du Prado the promenade
continues, with a glittering array of
restaurants, clubs and cafés, all the
way to the suburb of
Montredon
where the nineteenth-century Château
Pastré, set in a huge park, contains the
Musée de la Faïence (Tues-Sun:
June-Sept 11am-6pm; rest of year
10am-5pm; 12F/¬1.83). The eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century ceramics, most
produced in Marseille, are of an
extremely high quality, and a small
collection of novel modern and
contemporary pieces is housed on the top
floor. The entrance to the park (free)
is at 157 av de Montredon (bus #19 from
Mº Rd-Pt-du-Prado, stop "Montredon-Chancel").
Along the coast from here are easily
accessible
calanques (rocky
inlets), ideal for evening swims and
supper picnics as the sun sets.
Between Montredon and boulevard
Michelet , the main road out of the
city, is the contemporary art museum,
MAC (Tues-Sun: June-Sept 11am-6pm;
rest of year 10am-5pm; 12F/¬1.83) at 69
av d'Haïfa (bus #23 or #45 from Mº Rd-Pt-du-Prado,
stop "Haïfa" or "Marie-Louise"). The
permanent collection, in perfect pure-white
surrounds, includes works from the 1960s
to the present day by Buren, Christo,
Klein, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Tinguely
and Warhol, as well as Marseillais
artists César and Ben. There's also a
cinema, the Cinémac (tel
04.91.25.01.07), showing feature films,
shorts and videos on different themes
each month.
Set back just west of boulevard
Michelet stands a building that broke
the mould, Le Corbusier's seventeen-storey
block of flats, the Cité Radieuse
, designed in 1946 and completed in
1952. The Cité only fails to amaze now
because so many architects the world
over have tried to imitate Le
Corbusier's revolutionary model. Each
apartment has two levels and balconies
on both sides of the building, with
unhindered views of mountains and sea.
On different floors there are shops,
offices and a gymnasium; the third floor
is now a hotel ;
and the top floor features sculptural
and ceramic roof decoration as well as a
pool and a running track. To reach the
Cité, take bus #21 from Mº Rd-Pt-du-Prado
to Le Corbusier.
