Chateau D’If – Marseille, France

The Chateau D’If from the sea..

On our trip to Marseille, one of the excursions we did was to visit the Chateau D’If. It was free with our purchase of the Marseille pass. In addition to visiting the museum and the Cathedral , we chose this. As a big fan of “The Count of Monte Cristo”, l was more than happy to visit the setting of that thrilling adventure. Federico had never heard of the story, so he was excited, and has seen the movie at least twice since.

Off we went to on our little journey. The boat leaving the Old Port. You can see the mod looking Museum and gorgeous Cathedral of Marseille.

Chateau D’If is a fortress that later became a prison and is a mile off the coast of Marseille. It was built on the orders of King Francis 1st who had decided it would be a strategic point to defend Marseille from attackers. The commenced building in 1524 and completed it in 1531. The funny part was that Chateau D’If was never used in an attack, which was just as well because they later discovered it would have been useless :-) .

Cold and windy..

It however made an excellent, pretty much escape proof prison, thanks to it’s isolated location. A lot of prisoners were sent there to serve out their terms. The poor prisoners were kept on the bottom, where the cells were windowless. The richer men were able to secure a private cell on the upper floor with a window to the outside world. It reminds you of Alcatraz in San Francisco with the look and feel, and the fact that you can watch what you are missing in the real world..freedom!

The interior of the prison ground.

Cell interior

Alexandre Dumas, the author, used Chateau D’If in the famous novel about Edmund Dantes who managed to escape from the fortress. This is fiction of course, as no one is known to have escaped from there. Apparently, his story was based on a real life prisoner there who was a cobbler that had been wrongly accused of treachery and was thrown in jail . There is a cell named for Edmond Dantes at the Chateau D’if which is now only via tour boats taken from the Vieux Port.

They should have kept him in there.. :-)

Our visit was a lot of fun, the boat was packed and the ride took about half an hour. We were able to skip the line to get in with our passes. I would have been completely miserable there as a prisoner :-( . The cells are so depressing and cold, but nobody ever said prison was supposed to be fun. We climbed the stairs to the top and it is quite an impressive 360 degree view.

Awesome view of Marseille!

The Chateau D’If has been open to the public since 1890 since being demilitarized. I enjoyed the tour very much, and l would definitely do it again. You know, we had so many people telling us to skip Marseille, but l am so glad we didn’t listen. It is a wonderful and delightful city with lots of history, and the people we found very warm, the city is certainly no more dangerous than any big city. If you have an opportunity to visit, you should :-) . Federico and l both agreed that we could live there. Yeah.. We liked it that much. The housing seems a bit pricy (we checked), and you can understand why when you see all it has to offer.