A look at Marseille, the thousand-year-old port city that hosts the Olympic sailing games

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — Her black scarf fluttering in the wind, a teenage girl jumped into the sparkling Mediterranean from a concrete pier at a city marina, then scrambled to shore and onto a giant paddleboard for a quick tour with a dozen excited classmates.

They were bused to a swimming camp from a social services centre in the predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods of North African origin surrounding Marseille, which is hosting the event. 2024 Olympic Games sailing competition at the opposite end of its spectacular bay lined with monuments.

The ancient port is a crossroads of cultures and beliefs, where the sea is omnipresent but not equally accessible, and where beauty and cosmopolitan flair rub shoulders with enclaves of poverty and exclusion. even more intimately than in the rest of France.

“There are children who see the sea from their homes, but who have never been there,” explains Mathias Sintes, manager of the Corbière marina for the Grand Bleu association, which has organized camps for about 3,000 marginalized children, 50% of whom did not know how to swim, according to him. “The first objective is to teach them to save themselves.”

SINK OR SWIM

Brahim Timricht, who grew up in the “northern neighborhoods,” founded the association more than two decades ago to bring children to enjoy the sea that sparkles beneath their often dilapidated skyscrapers on rocky cliffs.

He then realised that many were not learning the basics of swimming at school – a requirement for primary school pupils in France – and he thought he could take advantage of the warm summer months to introduce them to the skill.

“The mothers then told me they still didn’t want to go to the beach because they couldn’t swim and were afraid, so we started programs with them,” Timricht said as dozens of children splashed happily under the hot July sun just days before the opening of the Olympic Sailing Competition.

The absence of swimming pools for school programs is a sign of “social and economic segregation,” says Jean Cugier, a physical education teacher in a high school in the northern districts and a member of the national union of physical education teachers.

Last school year, he bused 30 sixth-graders 45 minutes to a pool with two lanes reserved for them — an unsustainable model, he says, that he hopes to change with summer pool camps.

As the city has discussed using the Olympic Marina after the Games — like Paris plans for an Olympic swimming pool — the sea is too cold to swim in for most of the school year. The only concrete solution to the shortage of swimming pools is therefore to build more infrastructure, Cugier believes.

Another problem complicating swimming instruction, according to the Education Ministry, is the medical certificates that parents bring to excuse their children from lessons. Officials say these certificates are often fake and motivated by the desire of some conservative Muslim families not to have boys and girls swimming together.

Swimming pools have become a flashpoint in France’s fight over its unique approach to “laïcité” — loosely translated as “secularism” and strictly Regulating the role of religion in public spaceincluding schools and even the Olympics.

But sport is also a way to escape from marginalization. One of the great names of French football, Zinedine Zidane, who carried the Olympic torch On March 25, the Stade Vélodrome, one of the capital’s stadiums, was born in the most famous of Marseille’s northern districts. And football remains the unifying passion of the Marseillais, who regularly gather to cheer on the local team Olympique de Marseille at the Stade Vélodrome, one of the venues for the FIFA World Cup. Olympic Football Matches.

For the boys and girls of the Corbière marina, the overall seaside experience was an opportunity to meet new people from outside their neighbourhood.

“They don’t want to leave,” said one of the group’s leaders, Sephora Said, on the last day of the camp. She had worn a hijab during the outing, including while paddleboarding.

THE SEA, THE SEA EVERYWHERE

The sea as a gateway and meeting point is written into the very DNA of Marseille. Founded by Greek colonists 2,600 years ago as a trading post, it is the oldest city in France and the second largest.

“Before being a city, Marseille is a port,” explains Fabrice Denise, director of the Marseille History Museum, built next to the Greek archaeological site in what is still the city center. “If you want to understand all that is extraordinary about it, including the realities of cosmopolitanism, you have to understand its centuries-old history as a port.”

The current port, the third largest port in the Mediterranean in terms of cargo tonnage, includes refineries and a busy cruise area and stretches for almost 40 kilometers. But it all started in a small cove that is today the most important tourist attraction, the Old Port.

Large boats built of wood and caulked with cotton and fibers carried processed goods like grapevines, Denise explained. The trade spread north along the Rhone into what is now one of France’s most famous wine regions.

At the end of the port, a small shipyard still restores some boats built in the old style. They were used for fishing a few decades ago, but are now too expensive to maintain for utilitarian reasons.

Not far from there are the forts that King Louis XIV had added in the 17th century to protect the port and the military arsenal he had established. The small town became a metropolis.

Religious diversity also arrived by sea: Christians in reality and in myth, one of the most popular being that Mary Magdalene herself sailed to Marseille, which is commemorated each year with a large boat procession.

Centuries later, and increasingly since decolonization, Muslims from North Africa have flocked to Marseille. Of the city’s 870,000 inhabitants, some 300,000 are from Algeria.

In the narrow streets that lead up from the Old Port, Arabic resonates in market stalls, cafes and couscous restaurants, the city’s second most widely spoken language. Marseille French is unique, incorporating not only a distinctive accent but also words from the Provençal language of the countryside, explains Médéric Gasquet-Cyrus, a linguist and professor at Aix-Marseille University. He is co-author of the French-language book “Marseille pour les nuls.”

On its cover, as on the background of most photos Among the city’s most important monuments, including those of the Olympic regattas, stands the 19th-century, black-and-white-striped Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica, topped with a nearly 10-metre (33-foot) gold-covered statue of the Virgin Mary looking out to sea. It is known as “the Good Mother”.

“The Good Mother is almost a pagan symbol,” says Gasquet-Cyrus, who calls himself an atheist but goes anyway. “She is the protector of the city.”

The church welcomes about 2.5 million visitors a year, many for its daily masses and even more on its large terrace. Its 360-degree view takes in the new and old harbors, the villa-studded neighborhoods that house the Olympic Marina, and the massive towers of the northern neighborhoods.

“We see Marseille, the sea, the horizon, all of this under his benevolent gaze,” said the rector of the basilica, Reverend Olivier Spinosa. “It’s easier to see beauty from above, and it invites us to work on beautiful things when we are below.”

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