Plage des Catalans

Plage des Catalans sits in a compact cove defined by a square sixteenth-century watchtower that still looms over the sand. This beach, the closest sandy stretch to Marseille’s Old Port, bears the name of the fishing families from Catalonia who established a small colony here in the eighteenth century. They arrived in the wake of a devastating plague to help rebuild the city’s maritime economy, living in huts and drying their nets where volleyball players now gather.