Visit Marseille with kids

Marseille, with its unique blend of tradition and modernity, is a city that invites discovery, even for the youngest visitors. Whether you want to explore its historic districts, take advantage of its natural spaces or discover its museums, the city offers a wide range of activities suitable for the whole family. From strolls along the seafront to gourmet breaks and cultural discoveries, this guide gives you a few ideas for enjoying the city with your children, at your own pace and according to your desires.

We visited Marseille as a family in autumn! In All Saints’ Day, in 3 days with the camper van and magnificent weather. Our 1st visit dates back to the year when Marseille was Cultural Capital. We enjoyed the museums and the different districts of Marseille. Since then, other visits have taken place to share this guide to Marseille with your family.

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What can you visit in Marseille with your family?

After spending several weekends in Marseille with my family, I’ve put together a selection of visits and activities suitable for children. Click on the links to find out more about our experiences.

You can even book your tickets online* to save time on site. In fact, even when we looked a week in advance, we had a few surprises, which weren’t easy to manage with a tight schedule! There is a city pass, with all our advice at the end of the article.

The Château d’If:

A short boat trip, a pretty view, enough to breathe the air of Marseille with your loulous and discover this fortress built at the request of François Ier to protect the harbour of Marseille, from the archipelago of Frioul. It was soon transformed into a prison, which lasted for 400 years. Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo was imprisoned here. Your children will love touring the ramparts, climbing the stone staircases and making up stories about knights! Your ticket here to avoid the queue

Un petit tour en bateau, une jolie vue, de quoi respirer l’air de Marseille avec vos loulous et découvrir cette forteresse construite à la demande de François Ier pour protéger la rade de Marseille, depuis l’archipel de Frioul. Il sera rapidement transformé en prison et cela durera 400 ans. C’est ici que fut enfermé le Comte de Monte Christo d’Alexandre Dumas. Vos enfants aimeront faire le tour du chemin de ronde, grimper les escaliers en pierre et s’inventer des histoires de chevaliers! Votre billet ici pour éviter la queue

The Mucem: Marseille’s must-see museum for families

Great exhibitions of varying degrees of interest to the children, but they were delighted to run around the rooftops and alleys playing with the light and the screens. Your tickets here

The Marseillaise Memorial:

An unusual visit to find out all about the history of our national anthem! The children discovered a fun, dynamic and interactive museum that teaches us more about this French song. The whole family enjoyed the surprise! – Address: 23-25 rue Thubaneau, 13001 Marseille – Price: free of charge

The Musée d’Histoire de Marseille:

Learn about the history of this ancient city by playing with interactive workshops for children and superb models, that’s the programme offered by this museum. One of the highlights of our weekend! The children loved the models of the city, as well as the remains of ancient boats. – Address: 2, rue Henri- Barbusse – 13001 Marseille – Admission: free for permanent exhibition – €6 for others

Lhe Natural History Museum and the Parc Longchamp fountain

We missed this visit because it was a bank holiday, but we’ll try again next time, but the walk there was very pleasant and we were able to admire the superb and monumental fountain in the Parc Longchamp. On site, you’ll discover a surprising collection of stuffed animals. – Address: Parc Longchamp, 13004 Marseille – Open 9am to 6pm except Mondays – free admission to permanent collections

Fort St Nicolas

This old fort overlooks the Vieux Port on the left opposite Fort St Jean. It can be visited a few times a year by contacting the Tourist Office.

>> You might also like : Aix en Provence with kids

Le Moma: art centre in Marseille’s Cité Radieuse

Located at the top of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse, this is a magical place for lovers of art as diverse and varied as contemporary art. A gentle introduction to this art form, which children often enjoy, and a chance to see Marseille from above! – Address: 280 Boulevard Michelet, 13008 Marseille, France – Free admission

Unusual activities for children in Marseille

• Discover and understand art at the Préau des Accoules
• Learn more about soap and how it’s made
• Visit the Velodrome stadium for football fans!

Outdoor family activities in Marseille

• Take the little train up to La Bonne Mère,
• Admire the view from Notre Dame de la Garde, the famous basilica offering a 360° view of the city of Marseille
• Stroll around the Old Port, the Panier district and the Canebière
• Treasure hunts: treasure hunts, treasure games – there’s plenty to keep children occupied during your visit to Marseille. The Tourist Office offers a treasure hunt and a treasure hunt. It seems to me that you have to pay for them, but above all you have to book! Not always easy to fit in between 2 essential visits. So to remedy this, I downloaded a treasure hunt from the Tourisme en famille website, which specialises in family tourism in the south of France. For just 5€, Mini Voyageuse really enjoyed it and it encouraged her to walk at a time when she was getting fed up! I’ll tell you more about it in a future article…
• Climbing and scrambling in the Calanques, our article here
• Take the boat to the Frioules islands or the Chateau d’If, or simply cross the harbour
• Playing in Marseille’s parks: Parc Borely, Jardin du Pharo
• Stroll around the Vieux Port, the Panier district, the Canebière, chase the pigeons on Place des huiles
• Kayaking from Marseille

Enjoy Marseille’s most beautiful beaches with your family

• The beach right in the centre: Plage des Catalans
• The little-known beach: Malmousque beach
• The biggest: Prado beach
• The beach on the Frioul islands, accessible by boat from the Chateau d’If

IItineraries and weekends in Marseille for families

2-day family weekend in Marseille

• Day 1: Discover the old port, take the boat to visit the Château d’If and/or the Frioules islands, end the day at the Mucem.
• Day 2: Take the little train up to Notre Dame de la Garde for the children’s enjoyment, walk and meal in the Panier district, workshop at the Préau des Accoules (see my article for the days to visit), then the Musée de la Marseillaise, then the beach.

3 days to visit Marseille with your children

To the previous 2 days, add an outing for some beautiful walks in the Calanques – Walk to the calanques, the Sormiou and Morgiou calanques with access to Sugiton are accessible by car outside the summer periods (see our article), visit the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille.

>> See our article on our weekend in the calanques

Day 4: Beach towards the calanques of Cassis (Port Miou, Port Pin and En Vau)

Tips for visiting Marseille

• some of Marseille’s museums are free on the 1st Sunday of the month between November and March
• for the Château d’If, you need to get to the pier early to take the boat. We queued for half an hour before being able to take the boat we’d booked, but we got the next one an hour later!
• Beware of public holidays: many of the city’s museums are closed on public holidays, and some are even closed on overtime! for example, the natural history museum. It’s a shame this wasn’t noted on the website, which I had consulted a few days before, because we had to change the programme at the last minute and discover the Musée de la Marseillaise instead!

How to go to Marseille

• by TGV: this seems to me to be the easiest way as soon as you can! So there’s no problem parking, then you take a hotel in the city centre and everything is done on foot, metro… Then if you want to go and see the surrounding villages or the calanques by land, all you have to do is find a cheap car hire company, Hertz, to go out of town for the day. Book your train ticket here.
• by camper van: now that’s a bit trickier. If you want to be in the city centre, parking is impossible! And if you’re looking for a campsite, they’re all a long way from Marseille! So we found a service area that charges a fee, but is secure: Marly Parc. You can connect your motorhome to the electricity! Of course, we’re forgetting about the romantic side of things, there are a lot of motorhomes, sticking close together, but in any case, you have peace of mind during the day, away from your motorhome, it’s safe! To get to the city centre: take the n°22 bus, which stops just opposite Marly Parc, for a 15-minute journey, then the metro at Rond Point du Prado for 6-7 minutes to get to the port. On Sundays and public holidays, the 22 bus only runs every hour!
• by plane or by car: I can’t really give you my opinion as I haven’t tested it, but the car will have to be parked in a paying car park!

Where to stay in Marseille

Which city-pass should you choose with children to visit Marseille?

If you want to visit Marseille as a family, while keeping to your budget, don’t hesitate to choose a Pass. The big advantage of the City-pass is that transport is completely free, so it’s ideal when you’re taking the metro or bus with the family, and of course there are free or special-rate admissions to the museums listed.

City-pass Marseille 48h: valid for 48 hours from first use – price €39. Preferential or free admission to the city’s museums, including: the Musée Regards de Provence, the MuCEM, the Villa Méditerranée, the Le Corbusier exhibition, the FRAC (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain), the Atelier Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence, and for excursions: a visit to the Château d’If and the boat to the Ile d’If or the Frioul islands (free), the tourist train to Notre Dame de la Garde or Old Marseille (free).

Ciity-Pass Marseille 48h: Price adults 29€ – Price children:19€ – you will find all the information on this document CityPass Marseille. This pass was enough for us as we only visited the MuCEM, at an extra cost, but there was a special family rate. What’s more, with children, museums are not our priority on a family weekend (1 per day is quite enough!).

With this pass, we were able to visit the Château d’If and go up to Notre Dame de la Garde on the little train, much to the delight of my train fan, Mini Voyageur, who went tchou-tchou the whole way!

>> Book your City Pass at the best price

Where to eat in Marseille with the family?

Quite frankly, I don’t often talk about the restaurants we eat in because I admit that I never read the restaurant info myself! It’s pure chance that takes us to one restaurant or another, or their beautiful menus ;). On the other hand, I loved the little restaurants we discovered in the Panier district, in the superb little Provençal squares!

On the Vieux Port, which is where the restaurants are, we only had a small ice-cream because I have a bit of trouble choosing a restaurant from the hundred or so lined up there.

What about visiting Marseille with babies?

The black spot: changing clothes

After going to Canada, you’re bound to be disappointed (there, the changing table is in toilet cubicles deep in the woods and in the men’s toilets! ) ! France really does have a lot of work to do! In three days, with 3 or 4 museums visited and as many restaurants tested, we didn’t see a single changing table! Worst of all, at Maison M, I had to change Mini Voyageur on the floor, with a light that no longer worked (and of course with a huge surprise)! When I reported this, I was told that it was normal, as the toilets at the Town Hall are usually used by local councillors and they don’t take their children with them! Yes, except that there are thousands of families who must have visited this pavilion M.; the washbasins were superbly designed, big cylinders, very beautiful, but with no flat surface to put a baby on! Thank you, architects!

Pushchair or baby carrier

The pushchair is very practical as long as you don’t take the metro. We’re still fans of the baby carrier, and we’ve already sold our pushchair. And this time Mini Voyageur worked so well that, next time, I’m only going to take the Boba Air because he hardly wants to be carried any more except, of course, on his shoulders ;-).