Palais de la Bourse

This guide to the Palais de la Bourse in Marseille traces the trading palace architect Pascal Coste raised on the Canebière in the 1850s, and the clockmaker Henry Lepaute who built its tower mechanism to run forever. It follows the palace through its golden decades of merchants haggling beneath its arcades, then to August 1944, when shellfire and fire tore through the building during the Liberation fighting. Painter Dominique Magaud's frescoes in the salon d'honneur below sat directly beneath the burning roof.