Is Marseille safe for tourists?
That was the first question on our mind when we thought of choosing Marseille as a place to stay while visiting Provence Cote d’azur. We were not the only ones questioning Marseille’s reputation as a tourists-friendly place. There are many travellers out there raise the same question in popular travel forum.
Marseille reputation as an unsafe area for tourists had been known for long. For Japanese, to visit and stay in Marseille for holiday is a big no. There had been so many bad experiences shared amongst the travellers community on how unsafe Marseille was. That was Marseille in the old days. The recent stories from travellers visiting Marseille were good enough to make up our mind to be in Marseille. Bearing in mind that there is no place 100% safe, we finally chose Marseille as a place to stay in a week holiday in Provence Cote d’azur.
Marseille is not as scary as the stories on the internet. OR perhaps those bad stories happened several years ago and now become rather obsolete. Marseille from our perspective is relatively a safe place to wander around before dark. In summer time like now, the days only get dark after 0930pm. That is enough time to go around the city. There are some quiet alleyways in the city centre that we did not want to walk through.
The area where we stayed, 6th arrondissement was nice, quiet and safe to walk even before the sunset. Several times we wondered if it was safe to walk because the roads were too quiet. Probably because it was summer, everyone was on vacation. There were times we saw police car patrolling around the 6th arrondissement . That somehow gave a strong signal that the authority is working hard to keep the place safe.
Will we come back to Marseille again? Probably yes if we plan to go around Provence Cote d’azur but next visit it will only be for a transit.
