There are also concerns around the 100 days per year when the Mistral would give passengers more thrills than they bargained for! Locals have commented that the authorities can’t even get the ferry boat to run across the Vieux Port consistently nor have installed the tramway L2. In fact there was an ascenseurthere until the 60s when it was demolished. He points out that this is far cheaper per kilometre than the tramway and is an environmentally friendly alternative to all the tourist buses that labour up the hill to the church for example. It would swing locals and tourists up the hill to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde or across to L’Estaque….or even up to the Hopital Nord or out to the airport. Eugene Caselli, the president of the MPM, has written to the transport minister with a request for backing for a télépheriquein Marseille. There’s nothing new under the sun it seems. Then I saw this in the Vieux Port…….a bright ferry-boat taking tourists across to the islands and felt happy to see Henri Esparandieu’s name at large in Marseille. I did think, walking down from the Palais de Longchamps, that it was a shame he isn’t better known in Marseille, though a street does bear his name. He suffered from complications from his diabetes and died aged only 45 after an amputation of his left leg in L’Hopital Nouveau in Marseille.īut what an extraordinary legacy he left the town he loved. Sadly this talented man did not live long. It is a stunning basilica, both inside and out, much loved in the city and now its iconic representative. He also designed the Palais des Arts at the bottom of the cours Julien which is where a statue stands to commemorate him.īut surely Notre Dame de la Garde must have been the crowning achievement of his career. The Palais de Longchampis a grandiose confection of columns, statues and fountains, sited at the water tower where the water arrives from the Canal de Marseille its wings house the Museum of Fine Arts and the Natural History Museum.
Marseille was a booming port during the second republic with public money being channelled into grand buildings. The official appointment of Espérandieu to oversee the work of the Cathedral was made on and was the beginning of his brilliant career as an architect in Marseille where he settled in 1855. Vaudoyer asked Espérandieu to be his representative on site. He undertook paid studies to repay the financial contribution of his father, planning a railway station, a suspension bridge, a country house and others.īeginning in May 1852, Espérandieu began to work for an architect M. Vaudoyer who was responsible for construction of the Marseille Cathedral. Henri went to study in Paris and was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Unfortunately he also developed diabetes which caused him to faint frequently – there was no insulin available at this time. Henri was drawing, painting and designing from the age of 8 and his family ensured that he was tutored in art. He was adopted into a Protestant family who recognised his talent. He was born in September 1829 in Nimes, an ‘enfant deposé’ with ‘parents inconnus’. It seems amazing that a young man in his twenties would be given these commissions, especially from the Catholic ecclesiatical authorities as he was a Protestant! He also oversaw the construction of Marseille Cathedral, the biggest in France.Īnd, if you have visited the ‘Van Gogh a Bonnard’ expo at the Musée de Beaux Arts, you were in another of Espérandieu’s buildings – the Palais de Longchamps. This is Henri-Jacques Espérandieu who, incredibly, designed and managed the build of Notre Dame de la Gardestarting at the age of 23!