An unmissable sight from just about anywhere in Marseille is the Notre-Dame de la Garde church (“Our Lady of the Guard”) perched on top of the highest spot in the city. Nicknamed “the good mother” by locals, the basilica has its origins as a humble chapel in 1214. Over the centuries, the building was expanded and the area fortified. The most recent renovation was last year. The Virgin statue was re-gilded with thousands of sheets of gold. Soon, more renovation is about to begin. I’ve come at the perfect time to see the church without scaffolding.
The route to the church can vary. The bus I took still required a fair bit of walking uphill. I later saw that coming from the other side was the easier path, especially on a hot day!
The site itself consists of six floors. The ground floor is the reception and museum. The crypt is above that. Finally, on the sixth floor, is the basilica itself.
Seeing the crypt and basilica are free. There was a constant stream of arrivals but it was never too busy. Once at the top, you have a 360° view around the church. You can see Marseille and the surrounding mountains.
At one point someone asked me take to his photo. As usual, I asked him how he wanted it. He replied that I should do whatever I thought best because “I trust you”!
Usually, when people ask me to take a photo, they have a particular angle in mind. However, it doesn’t always work out. For example, some people want the whole scene behind them. This can result in them being tiny in the photo. Other times, people stand in the wrong place. For example, generally it’s better for you to be facing the sun, so that you’re lit up. The alternative is to have the sun behind you but cameras don’t like taking a photo of the sun — unless it’s sunset.
People don’t always know what their phone is capable of. Once a man was having a photo taken by his wife but she couldn’t get in a building behind him. He asked me and I just zoomed out and got both the background and him in. He hadn’t discovered the zoom out feature.
One young woman in Budapest asked me to take her photo from the waist up. This didn’t work but she was happy with the full length photo of her. She’d asked me not to zoom in.
Zoom can appear temperamental. That’s because there are two types of zoom: optical and digital. Broadly, optical zoom is what the camera lens is capable of doing. It’s a physical property of the lens. Digital zoom is when a camera (or phone) processes what it’s seeing to make it larger.
The camera will use optical zoom first. When it can’t physically zoom in any further, it will use computer magic to manipulate what you’re seeing to make it look closer. That’s digital zoom.
Generally, you want higher optical zoom, which will determine how good a zoomed in photo will be. Digital zoom is like pinching a photo to enlarge it on your phone: the closer you get, the worse the photo.
The woman in Budapest may have known all this. Or maybe she took a few zoomed photos and didn’t like the quality, possibly because she’d digitally zoomed in.
At one point, as I sat admiring the view, three people (could have been a father and two adult children) got to the top. The father had a dog. Quickly, one of the security staff said that dogs were not allowed on church grounds. This may have been more to do with the potential dog mess rather than anything to do with the Bible.
After some hesitation, the father started to leave with the dog, the two children staying behind. At that point, the dog sat down and refused to move! Even the security guard had to laugh. The two children joined their dad. At which point, the dog was ready to leave.
The time flew and before I knew it, the security staff were asking people to leave the grounds. As I descended, people were still climbing the stairs.
I took the second route to return to the Old Port in the town centre. It was a much nicer route than the one I took coming up.
In town, I went to a large Carrefour supermarket and bought some fruit, bread, olives, and humous. I also bought a small jar of Marmite, which was a scandalous €6! I had no choice since I’d run out!
On the port front, I ate the bread and humous with olives on the side then some fruit. Despite its simplicity, it was a satisfying dinner.