Fort Saint-Jean
Seventeenth-century harbor fortress whose quarantine checkpoint once inspected every incoming ship's papers.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Fort Saint-Jean centers on the quarantine checkpoint that once stood at its gate, where every ship arriving from the eastern Mediterranean had to present a clean bill of health before a sailor could set foot in Marseille. It follows the merchant ship Grand Saint-Antoine, which sailed in on the twenty-fifth of May 1720 with papers in order despite nine crew already dead at sea, and the bales of silk and cotton that were smuggled past the checkpoint into the city's warehouses. Nearly three centuries later, scientists went looking for the real cause in an unexpected source: the teeth of plague victims buried nearby. Stand where the health officers once checked those papers as you listen.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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