A blend of the exotic and earthy

Grilling fish in Marseille
Fry-up ... Grilling fish on the quayside at Marseille. Photograph: AFP/Getty/Anne-Christine Poujoulat

Rugged Marseille is an intriguing mix of Gallic chic, Arab cool, industrial graft and ancient grandeur. The 'anti-Paris' is a verbose, ballsy city with all the seediness, earthiness and exoticism you'd expect from a 2,600-year-old port. The Marseillais are a mixed bunch - with large Algerian, Corsican, Moroccan and Italian communities - but everyone slumps together on benches around the Vieux Port, soaking up the sun. They are laid-back, friendly and busy, you come here to join in, not to stick out.

The cultural mix infuses the city's music, fashion and food. The concert hall Espace Julien, in the Bohemian Cours Julien area, holds rock, hiphop, reggae and Afro-groove concerts a few streets from the stunning Art Deco opera houses. Boutiques sell fashion with a French and North African twist, from kaftans to Pierre Cardin. You can find any type of cuisine here, supplemented with sparkling fresh fish. The Rue Fortia alone has Vietnamese, Syrian, Italian, Kashmiri, Irish and French restaurants.

Six hours by train from Waterloo, two by plane, Marseille sprawls 40km along France's Mediterranean coast from the industrial port in the north, past the focal Vieux Port, along the chic Corniche JF Kennedy to the stunning Calanques, narrow, fjord-like inlets which serrate the white cliffs to the south. And it's not all Count of Monte Cristo, Corbusier and bouillabaisse.

To get a grip on the mayhem, start at the foot of the Vieux Port, where the sea punches its way into Marseille's heart. This is where the fish come in - market traders hawk plug-ugly scorpion fish, clacking lobsters and flapping octopuses, alongside fake designer sunglasses - and the daytrippers go out, on boats to the Calanques and Frioul islands. Stroll north into Le Panier, the charismatic immigrant district, all narrow alleys, pastel shutters and lazing cats. Head up to the beautiful Vieille Charité, a former workhouse, now a brilliant anthropology museum, which, until August, will house 150 Provençal landscapes from modern masters such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, Dufy and Braque.

For galleries and shopping stride east from the Vieux Port up La Canebière, Marseille's main artery, which leads to the rococo Palais Longchamp, housing the museums of fine art and natural history. South of the old port are bustling markets, the shops and cafes of Cours Julien - the place to be when night falls - and then the corniche, curling dramatically around the bay towards hotels, parks, beaches, urban sprawl and then the charismatic plunging cliffs of the Calanques.

En route you can't miss a vast banner of possibly the best footballer in the world ... ever, staring out to sea. A local hero, the French-Algerian Zinedine Zidane has helped lay to rest Marseille's reputation as a battleground between immigrants and the Front Nationale. 'Zizou' emerged from a housing estate here, along with France's top hiphop outfit IAM, giving a triumphal twist to the Marseillaise. Beneath the banner is the Anse des Auffes, a postcard-perfect fishing village in the middle of the city, where President Chirac comes to eat the local bouillabaisse. The contrast is typical. Battered by the Romans, pirates, German bombs, urban sprawl and the mistral wind, Marseille gets back on its feet and wears its scars with pride.

Five things you must do

1 Wander the labyrinthine alleys of Le Panier, the charismatic medieval quarter, up to the beautiful Centre de la Vieille Charite. Take a coffee or aperitif in the grand, tiled Le Café Parisien, Place Sadi Carnot, Marseille's oldest watering hole.

2 Take a boat to the Calanques, right, France's most dramatic coastline - cliffs carved into by the sapphire Med. A protected natural monument, chock-full of rare plant, bird and reptile species. Depart from the Quai des Belges, Vieux Port (00 33 4 9155 5009).

3 Spend an evening in the Bar Caravelles, 34 Quai du Port (00 33 4 9190 3664). Bustling with students and grizzled locals, a bottle of rosé or pastis will be served with a dinner's worth of tasty, gratis tapas. This colourful first-floor bar is the perfect place to watch the sun go down, pinking the old port as it goes.

4 Promenade up to the Jardin du Phare, complete with palace built by Napoleon III for his Empress Eugenie, which gives world-beating views back down the wide blue runway of the sea coursing into the centre of the city, and of the vast ferries streaming off to Algeria, Tunisia, Corsica and Sardinia.

5 Watch Olympic Marseille (www.olympiquedemarseille.com), struggling to regain the glory of their 1993 European Cup triumph. The football isn't quite as good as it used to be but the atmosphere and support of 60,000 fans, banging drums, singing obscenities and having a grand old time, is first class.

Don't even think about it

· Marseille and crime mix in the imagination like water and pastis in a glass - thanks largely to Gene Hackman's French Connection and Jean-Marie Le Pen's violent cohorts - but it's no more dangerous than London. Just don't hang around the housing estates (batiments) late at night ...

· Don't walk round the Vieux Port if it's hot. Save time and energy by taking the tiny foot ferry the 500 metres between the town hall and the Place aux Huiles. It skits back and forth all day for €1.

· Don't show your ignorance by asking for a pastis, the generic name for Marseille's favourite aperitif. There are numerous different varieties of the aniseed-based drink and different ways of taking it. You should specify the variety - 51 for a Ricard, casa for a Casanis. Five parts water to one part pastis is the normal mix, but there are also cocktails, including a perroquet, with mint syrup, or the classic mauresque, with almond syrup.

· Avoid July and August if you can. It's boiling hot and more touristy than usual.