
La Corniche Kennedy
Seaside promenade along a clifftop road, lined by the world's longest bench and Mediterranean views.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to La Corniche Kennedy in Marseille follows the Swiss-born engineer Franz Mayor de Montricher, who took on the task of bringing drinking water into a cholera-stricken city in the 1830s. You'll hear how he chose to carry the Durance river's water over a valley by aqueduct rather than under it by siphon, and how the same public-works drive later put unemployed Marseille workers onto this very corniche during the 1848 revolution. The guide also follows his design down to the little cove of Vallon des Auffes ahead, where a stone bridge carries his name forward.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Palais Longchamp
Theatrical water tower and twin museum wings crowned with bronze bulls and a river goddess.
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille
Fine-arts collection housed in a palace wing built beside a monumental fountain honoring a river.
Place des moulins
Village-like square hiding a vast nineteenth-century water cistern beneath its cobblestones.
Vallon des Auffes
Pocket-sized fishing port of colorful cabanons and Provencal pointu boats beneath a stone arched bridge.
Anse de la Fausse Monnaie
Rocky Mediterranean cove sheltering wooden fishing boats beside a three-Michelin-star kitchen.
Prophet's Beach
Narrow sandy cove below a coastal corniche, named for a rival ship and an opera singer's legend.