France Revisited asked Jenny Eagle, a British journalist living in Montpellier, to introduce our readers to her adopted city and its surroundings and to suggest several luxury hotels and gastronomic restaurants in that Mediterranean city and region where Provence gives way to Languedoc. Jenny writes:

Tell your American friends that you’re going to the south of France and they’ll likely think you’re headed to Provence and the Côte d’Azur. Immediately, they’ll start telling you about their own experiences in sunny squares, lavender fields, hilltop villages, Aix-en-Provence, Cannes, Nice, Saint-Tropez, Marseille, and all of southern France that lies east of the Rhone River.

Yet southern France isn’t limited to its eastern Mediterranean coast as it edges toward Italy and the Alps. It also follows a western and southwestern arc toward Spain and the Pyrenees. Curve right as you approach the Mediterranean from the north, as the train does, and you’ll soon reach Montpellier, perhaps the least known (to Americans, at least) of France’s ten largest cities. Montpellier weighs in at number seven, with a population of about 320,000, or over 800,000 including the metropolitan area.

Here, just eight miles inland from the Mediterranean, where Provence has given way to Languedoc, lies a dynamic southern city where medieval streets and grand private mansions meet contemporary architecture, a vibrant university scene, noteworthy gastronomy and a robust if lesser-known wine region right on its doorstep. It has many of the ingredients that make destinations to cities in Provence and along the Riviera attractive—history, culture, food, wine, sunshine and the Mediterranean—but it’s a city that feels less defined by tourism.

Nevertheless, tourism is on the upswing, and while Americans naturally lag in numbers behind European and Mediterranean travelers, it may not be too long before one of those friends to whom you mention the south of France tells about his or her first trip here.

Before suggesting several luxury hotels where you might set down your bags to explore Montpellier and its surroundings and offering several suggestions for a gastronomic meal, here’s a brief introduction to the city itself.

The Écusson and other highlights

The historic center of Montpellier is known as the Écusson, meaning heraldic shield, for its shape. It’s the obvious place to begin. Its medieval streets open onto elegant squares and reveal a remarkable collection of private mansions built when Montpellier was a prosperous center of commerce, scholarship and medicine.

The Place de la Comédie, dominated by the 19th-century Opéra Comédie and the fountain of the Three Graces, is the city’s popular meeting place. From there, the streets lead towards the late-17th-century strollway called Promenade du Peyrou, the Arc de Triomphe (1691), and the late-Gothic Saint-Pierre Cathedral.

The Jardin des Plantes, founded in 1593, provides a living reminder of Montpellier’s intellectual heritage. Created for teaching at the city’s medical school, it is one of Europe’s oldest botanical gardens. The medical school itself, which can also be visited and continues to flourish, was founded in 1220!

Yet Montpellier is not a city preserved in amber. Its newer districts have become showcases for contemporary architecture, from Ricardo Bofill’s monumental Antigone to more recent buildings around Port Marianne and the Lez River. This mixture of old and new is one of the city’s defining characteristics.

Montpellier is also distinctly youthful. Its universities and prestigious institutions of higher learning called grandes écoles attract the city a student population of 80,000, which partially explains the proliferation of cafés, wine bars, cultural venues and restaurants. The result is a southern French city with an especially energetic atmosphere.

The Mediterranean is close enough to shape the atmosphere without dominating it. Beaches can be reached within a short distance, while the Étang de Thau, Sète and the vineyards north of the city offer easy excursions. Montpellier, capital of the department or subregion of Hérault, is also a natural base for exploring the Languedoc wine country. (See Beyond Montpellier at the bottom of this article.)

The city’s cultural and sporting calendar is anything but provincial. FISE Montpellier, created in 1997, has grown into one of Europe’s largest urban-sports events. Held in May on the banks of the Lez, the event brings together 2700 amateur and professional athletes and hundreds of thousands of spectators for competitions in BMX, skateboarding, roller, freestyle scooter, parkour, breaking and other disciplines.

In September, the Arabesques Festival provides a completely different expression of Montpellier’s Mediterranean identity. The two-week festival celebrates contemporary creations and heritage of the Arab world through concerts, dance, cinema, literature, visual arts and discussion.

Whatever time of year you might visit, be sure to check out the schedules of Montpellier’s premier stages, the Domaine d’O for theater, dance and more, and the Opéra Comédie for concerts and opera. Also look into the permanent and temporary exhibitions at Musée Fabre, the city’s major art museum. Information of upcoming and seasonal events in the city and its surroundings can also be found on the official site of the Montpellier Tourist Office.

Overall, Montpellier is a dynamic historic Mediterranean city with a contemporary, international cultural identity… and some fine hotels and restaurants.

Choice luxury hotels

Hôtel Richer de Belleval brings together history, art and gastronomy at a single address. It’s difficult to overlook in the hotel- and restaurant-scape of the city.

This Relais & Châteaux member property occupies a restored 17th-century mansion on Place de la Canourgue, one of the prettiest squares in the Écusson. Its restoration combines historic decoration and contemporary art.

The hotel is home to Jardin des Sens, the restaurant of Montpellier’s celebrated Pourcel brothers, Jacques and Laurent. Their original restaurant helped establish the city as a serious gastronomic destination, and the current address continues that connection. Its menu proposes a modern take on Mediterranean cuisine, drawing on the ingredients and flavors of the wider Languedoc. Olive oil, Lucques olives, Pélardon goat cheese, oysters from the Thau lagoon and local wines sit alongside regional specialities such as tielle (a savory octopus tourte), rouille de seiche (a cuttlefish stew) and macaronade (a pasta and tender meat dish).

Domaine de Verchant, another Relais & Châteaux member, provides an alternate interpretation of Montpellier luxury from just beyond the city’s edge. Set among 42 acres of vineyards in Castelnau-le-Lez, this five-star combines a historic estate with contemporary design, restaurants, wine touring and a spa.

For travelers who want the atmosphere of a wine estate without sacrificing access to the city, it is an especially appealing option. The vineyards begin almost at the city gates, so Montpellier’s center is a short ride away.

Domaine de Biar offers a more intimate alternative in Lavérune, also just beyond the city limit but in the opposite direction. This four-star property, where modern comfort meets nature on a historic estate, has just 13 rooms and suites. Its rooms deliberately retain traces of the building’s history, with stone, exposed beams and period details, while introducing contemporary interiors.

Since disconnection is increasingly part of the luxury-travel equation, there are no televisions in the rooms, and the property encourages guests to reconnect with the surrounding landscape. The restaurant, La Table de Biar, provides a gastronomic reason to both disconnect and reconnect over a slow, relaxed, delicious meal.

Back in central Montpellier, four-star Maison Soleil presents yet a different take on contemporary southern hospitality. This 10-room boutique hotel occupies a Mediterranean house near Saint-Roch, with individually designed rooms that retain the character of the original building while introducing a more modern sensibility. There is no conventional reception; the hotel operates through a fully digital, self-service system, although guests have access to 24-hour assistance. It is an interesting example of a new generation of Montpellier hotel, intimate and rooted in the city’s architecture, but decidedly modern in the way it operates.

Further afield, Château & Village Castigno offers perhaps the most unusual stay in the wider Languedoc. In the tiny wine village of Assignan, about an hour west of Montpellier, this “sustainable wine resort,” as it calls itself, is spread across the village itself rather than contained in a single building, with rooms occupying restored houses painted in vivid colors that have made Castigno famous. Created by Belgian couple Marc and Tine Verstraete, the project grew from their passion for the local vineyards into a village-wide hospitality concept encompassing accommodation, restaurants, wine touring and a spa. It’s an eccentric but compelling example of what can happen when a hotel becomes inseparable from its landscape and community.

Select gastronomic restaurants

The Pourcel brothers remain central to Montpellier’s culinary story, but they are far from the only reason to come hungry.

The city has an impressive concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants, including Jardin des Sens, La Réserve Rimbaud, Leclère, Pastis, Reflet d’Obione and Ébullition, each of which carries one star at this writing.

At Reflet d’Obione, chef Laurent Cherchi’s cooking draws strongly on the region, connecting produce from the Cévennes to the Mediterranean.

La Réserve Rimbaud, set beside the Lez River beneath mature plane trees, has become a Montpellier institution. Chef Charles Fontès has retained its Michelin star since 2010 and describes his return to the restaurant as a retour aux sources, a return to his roots. He first came here as a child with his father.

Leclère offers something more unusual. Hidden behind an understated doorway on Rue André-Michel, the restaurant is reached through a narrow, stainless-steel-lined passage before opening into a striking space of stone, granite, tile and vaulted ceilings. The former medical-supply depot was transformed by chef Guillaume Leclère himself, who designed the room around the open kitchen, where he undertakes a deliberately pared-back approach to cooking. His single fixed-price menu changes with the day’s arrivals, with diners given only a list of ingredients rather than a preview of the dishes, part of the element of surprise that has become central to the dining experience here.

Montpellier as destination and base

One of the city’s greatest advantages for travelers is that Montpellier works equally well as a destination and as a base.

Sète, with its canals, fishing traditions and artistic heritage, is an obvious excursion. The Étang de Thau provides a landscape of oyster farms and lagoons that feels very different from the nearby beaches.

North of Montpellier, the vineyards of Pic Saint-Loup offer wine tasting against a backdrop of limestone hills. Further west lie the villages and landscapes of the Terrasses du Larzac. Nîmes, with its extraordinary Roman heritage, is close enough for a day trip by train or car. By car, Montpellier can be the point of departure for or return the lesser-known zone of western Hérault covered in this article on France Revisited or the rugged region of the Cévennes to the north.

As previously mentioned, the region also has a strong connection between wine and tourism—this despite lacking well-known appellations or designations of origin. Montpellier’s metropolitan area has developed its own Vignobles & Découvertes (Vineyards & Discovery) network, with estates near the city offering cellar visits, tastings and other activities.

This combination makes Montpellier particularly well suited to travelers who want more than urban exploration. A visit of several days or more will lead to contrasting experiences: medieval architecture one day, vineyards the next, followed by oysters beside the lagoon, a gastronomic meal, an evening performance, and more.

This is a city with enough history to satisfy the traditional Francophile, enough contemporary architecture and culture to interest the curious traveler, enough gastronomy and wine to justify a serious culinary trip, and enough proximity to the Mediterranean and the Languedoc countryside to make it an effective base for exploring the wider region. Visiting Montpellier offers the chance to discover a corner of southern France that feels established rather than staged, cosmopolitan without losing its regional identity, and increasingly confident about what it has to offer.

The fact that your friends think that you’re referring to Provence and the Riviera when you mention “south of France” could even be part of its appeal.

© 2026 by Jenny Eagle

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Imagine visiting Boston in the 1980s and looking for the bar from Cheers, or New York City in the 1990s in search of the Seinfeld diner, or again in 2001 for the coffee shop in Friends. Do that and you can well imagine the excitement that fans of France’s longest-running TV series, Plus belle la vie (Life’s so sweet), feel when they come to Marseille in search of the Mistral Bar in the Mistral district.

They won’t find the Mistral, of course, since it’s a fictional bar in a fictional neighborhood, but the Mistral district was largely inspired by the Panier, which is a very real and stroll-worthy district just a ten-minute walk from the Old Port.

Created in 2004 and still going strong, Plus belle la vie is an easy-going prime-time urban soap opera with myriad characters. It’s a glossy, brightly colored soap, not quite comedy, not quite drama, far from “true” but with frequent nods to issues of the day. Extracts from the series can be seen on its official website.

Since the show is shot then shown with little delay its writers are able to incorporate current events into the storyline. This allows characters to discuss the issues of the day while living out their fictional lives, loves, friendships and melodramas. Demonstrations held during parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage, the aftershock of the terrorist attack against the weekly Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, and the French moratorium on the exploitation of shale gas have all been discussed by characters while the subjects were still headlining the news. Questions of racism, homosexuality, violence, rape, and drug and alcohol addictions all find a place in the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously soap-opera-style intrigue. The show is broadcast at 8:25pm, overlapping with the prime evening network news hour.

Most of the scenes of Plus belle la vie are shot behind the closed doors of the La Belle de Mai studios, in the 3rd district of Marseille, rather than in the Panier. Nevertheless, fans visiting Marseille and looking for the Mistral Bar, one of the central settings in the series, will often end up reveling in a drink at the Bar des 13 Coins, 45 rue Sainte-Françoise on the Panier’s Place des Treize Cantons, which the show’s production designer says inspired the fictional Mistral Bar in the TV series. The Bar des 13 Coins is a small family café-restaurant with outdoor tables on a shady terrace with three big trees and colorful artwork on the facade. Like a café-bar on a village square in Provence, this is the venue to meet friends to share the trials and joys of everyday life in the sunny side of France.

In a sense, Plus belle la vie could take place anywhere in France, except for the occasional view of the Mediterranean or of Notre Dame de la Garde Church or talk about the OM, Marseille’s soccer team. Furthermore, the actors don’t even speak in the colorful singing accent of southern France, let alone with the slang of Marseille. Some say that if the real local accent were spoken it would be necessary to have subtitles in French. But even removed from local reality “Plus belle la vie” has been a hit in Marseille as well as throughout France.

Viewers have love-hate relationships with the assortment of characters, while the central character remains the neighborhood itself. Which brings us to the real Panier, a district of narrow, sloping streets, colorful facades and shutters, laundry hanging out the window, and a history of written history dating back to the ancient Greeks.

From ancient Greeks to poor immigrants to cut-throat films to gentrification

Settled in 630 BC by the ancient Greeks, the Panier (long before it took on its current name) was the area first settled in Marseille. More recently, due to its location near the seaport, the Panier has continued to welcome successive waves of immigration: Neapolitans, Corsicans, South Americans, North Africans, Vietnamese and Comorians from the islands near Madagascar.

This neighborhood draws its name from the Logis du Panier, an inn that existed in the area in the 17th century and probably had a basket (panier) suspended outside. The Panier became a poor, working class neighborhood, what the French call a quartier populaire, when in the 17th century, wealthy merchants left it to settle in the new neighborhoods in the east which were created under the impetus of Colbert during the reign of Louis XIV. By the mid-19th century the Panier had acquired its reputation as a rough, dangerous, crime-ridden area, a reputation that it held onto until several decades ago.

The “Mediterranean noir” writer, Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000), who grew up in the Panier, paints an old Bronx-like picture of the area in “Total Chaos” or “Total Kéhops” in French. Izzo’s crime fiction follows the protagonist Fabio Montale, a disillusioned local cop making his rounds on the hard, seedy  streets of this neighborhood, a den for gangs and drug dealers, full of sailors, prostitutes and whorehouses.

Izzo also vividly describes the demolition by the German occupying force of a section of the Panier in 1943, as they considered its maze of narrow streets to be a haven for resistant fighters, refugees, criminals, prostitutes, Jews and Communists. On January 24, 1943, some 30,000 inhabitants from the neighborhood were evacuated, with about 2,000 sent to concentration camps. Then 1,500 houses in the lower section of the Old Town were dynamited.

Through the eyes of Montale, readers witness the humiliation of Fabio’s father, a docker at the port, and his mother, who toiled away 14 hours a day, packing dates. They were rounded up in the middle of the night on January 24, 1943 because of an expulsion order. Fabio reflects back about that day and the Nazis’ dream of destroying part of this neighborhood as it was considered to be a den of degenerate behavior.

A mini-series based on Izzo’s books, with Alain Delon starring as Fabio Montale, was shown on French TV in 2002.

Even just 20 years ago the Panier was known as a cut-throat area and was largely avoided by those living outside the neighborhood. Its cinematic reputation didn’t help. Borsalino (1970), directed by Jacques Deray and starring Alain Delon and John-Paul Belmondo, is a famous French gangster movie taking place in 1930. La French (in English, The Connection) (2014), directed by Cédric Jimenez and starring Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche, is an action film about a drug gang in the 1970s.

The City of Marseille began renovating the Panier in 1983, and little by little the neighborhood has changed. Increasingly gentrified while retaining some funk and grit, the Panier is now viewed as far safer than decades ago. It has been called Marseille’s Montmartre. Artist studios, craft shops and trendy cafes and bars have replaced brothels of the past.

Several years ago a local association and a local theater teamed up to produce as a community project a counter-version of Plus belle la vie called C’est pas joli, joli (It’s not a pretty picture). Residents of the Panier got their hand at acting, guided by professionals but bringing to the screenplay their own interpretation. Here are the first and second episodes.

Visiting the Panier

Large portions of the Panier are closed to car traffic from late morning onwards, giving the neighborhood a distinctive atmosphere of a village in Provence, in particular around the Bar des 13 Coins.

Bocce ball, which the French call boules, with pétanque being its Provencal version, is right at home here… at the Musée de la Boule, a fun mix of shop, museum and a pétanque court. And where there is pétanque in Provence there’s sure to be pastis, the anise-flavored spirit and cocktail associated with summer days in the South of France. So it’s no surprise to find the Janot Pastis Boutique next to the Boule Museum. Also nearby is Le Clan des Cigales, a restaurant serving Mediterranean cuisine based on French products. A boutique across the street sells santons, small figurines placed in traditional Provence Nativity-village scenes. From there you need only follow your nose to find nearby another product associated with this city: Marseille soap, made with vegetable oils.

The Panier is very hilly, so for less walking the district can be visited by taking the little tourist “train,” which can be gotten at the Quai du Port across from City Hall (Hôtel de Ville). The main sights will be pointed out with recorded commentary in French, English and Italian. Riders can hop off to visit La Vieille Charité, formerly a home for the poor and wayward built between 1671 and 1749, which is one of the city’s most important historical monuments. La Vieille Charité now houses museums with a permanent collection of archeology from around the world, galleries, a cultural center, a café and a small cinema. A temporary exhibit examining the travels of the American writer Jack London in the South Seas is being shown here from Sept. 8, 2017 to Jan. 7, 2018.

A bilingual (English/French) walking tour of Le Panier is available through the tourist office on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It sets out from the Tourist Office located at 11 La Canebière and enters the heart of the Panier district via the Port area, just as the ancient Greeks did. The tour ends at the Place de Lenche, site of the Greek agora and the Roman forum. The area, busy with cafés and restaurants, offers a spectacular view of the old Port and the Notre Dame de la Garde Church.

The tour provides the keys to understanding the development of Marseille through the centuries, including the separation between the wealthier coastal zone to the south and the poorer neighborhoods to the north, and reconstruction work that was necessary following demolition by the German occupying force in 1943.

Near the Panier: The Cathedral and the MuCEM

Just as one doesn’t go to Paris to only visit Montmartre, one doesn’t come to Marseille simply to visit the Panier, hardcore Plus belle la vie fans aside.

Nearby, down by the marine terminal, is the enormous Sainte Marie Majeure Cathedral, often referred to as La Major. Marseille’s recent architectural claims to fame are three stunning museum buildings: the Villa Méditerranée cultural and conference center, the Regards de Provence Museum, and the MuCEM. They were all inaugurated in 2013, the city’s year as the European Capital of Culture. (Marseille has been named European Capital of Sport for 2017, but that’s another story.)

The most popular and renowned of the three is the MuCEM, the Museum of Mediterranean Civilization and Culture. More than a museum, actually, the MuCEM is a multidisciplinary cultural institution housing the Mediterranean Gallery, major temporary exhibitions, and much more.

A panoramic view can be had from the rooftop terrace eating and drinking area, which includes four spaces—café, snack, casual, chic—collectively called Le Môle Passédat. Reservations are recommended for the most polished of these, La Table. The eateries are overseen by Gérard Passédat, chef of the 3-star Michelin restaurant Le Petit Nice located in the Marseille’s 7th arrondissement.

Meanwhile, the port remains the city’s long-time home to bouillabaisse, the centerpiece of Marseille’s sea-inspired cuisine.

Other opportunities for fine dining, shopping and artist exhibitions can be found in the beautifully renovated Docks Village, which opened in 2015, or the Terrasses du Port. These renovations and constructions were part of the ambitious Marseille-Euroméditerranée project, which was initiated in 1995 to renovate a nearly 1200-acre zone in the heart of the city, between the commercial harbor, the Old Port and the TGV station. Involving a 7-billion euro investment, it was at the time the largest urban renewal project in southern Europe.

Crime and Safety in Marseille

Marseille is often compared to my own hometown of Chicago in terms of crime and safety. Drug- and weapons-related gang and organized crime violence are not uncommon in certain quarters. As in Chicago, in Marseille I would avoid certain areas, especially at night. That goes for much of the 3rd arrondissement, one of the poorest neighborhoods in France. The centrally located St. Charles train station may have been beautifully modernized but I would not loiter around the station area. Neither would I walk around La Canebière at night. Keeping an eye on one’s luggage, not placing a purse on the ground by one’s chair in a restaurant, and not flaunting expensive-looking costume jewelry, let along the real thing, are common sense tips that don’t solely apply to Marseille but are worth keeping in mind with respect to this city.

But don’t let those warnings keep you away from discovering France’s second largest city and most multicultural port city, particularly the portions described in this article. For my recent visit, I booked accommodations in the Panier itself and walked around the neighborhood alone at night. I felt safe on the Waterfront with the MuCEM and other new museums, at the port. There’s a police station, the Commissariat de l’Evéché, a stone’s throw from the Major Cathedral at the entrance of the Panier.

(c) 2017

Wendy Dubreuil is a conference interpreter with a passion for French TV shows and films and challenging social issues.

The post In Search of the Sweet Life in Marseille’s Panier District appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Pointe du Layet is right next to Cap Nègre, famous as Carla Bruni’s family residence and hence that of her husband the president. Carla and Nicolas prefer Cap Nègre to Fort de Brégançon, an official presidential vacation residence that’s only a few kilometers away.

Shot from below, this is a eucalyptus, which gives off subtle fragrances in the heat of the sunny in the south.

Dans le cadre des études France Revisited sur le rapport entre les arbres et les lieux, voici trois images prises par Stanislas Illya Yankovich sur la côte méditerranéenne entre Toulon et St Tropez à la Pointe du Layet. Mais attention aux visiteurs pudiques: l’endroit est déclaré naturiste

La Pointe du Layet se trouve juste à côté du Cap Nègre, célèbre par la résidence familiale de Carla qui y accueille son président de mari, qu’ensemble ils préfèrent à l’officiel Fort de Brégançon qui n’est distant que de quelques kilomètres.

Pris par en dessous, c’est un eucalyptus (à gauche) qui, dans la chaleur du soleil du Midi, dégage de subtiles effluves.

And these two are “tortured” pines by the sea.
Et les deux autres sont des pins “torturés” par la mer.

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