Le Panier

This guide to Le Panier opens with a question: how did one house survive when fifteen hundred buildings around it did not. It reaches back to Greek sailors from Phocaea who founded Massalia here around 600 BCE, and follows the waves of Italians, Corsicans, Armenians, Vietnamese, Comorians and North Africans who later packed into these same lanes. From there it turns to the twenty-second of January 1943, when German occupying forces, convinced the alleys were sheltering the Resistance, ordered some thirty thousand residents out with almost no notice. Look up at the stone corner where two narrow streets meet, above the old harbor, as you listen for the answer.