| La Canebière, the broad boulevard that runs for about a kilometre down to the port, is the undisputed hub of the town, its name taken from the hemp (canabé) that once grew here and provided the raw materials for the town's thriving rope-making trade. Fashioned originally with the Champs-Élysées in mind, La Canebière is a more patchwork affair of hotels, cafés and shops, neatly providing a division between the moneyed southern quartiers and the ramshackle quartier Belsunce to the north – an extraordinary, dynamic, mainly Arab area and a great trading ground. Stereos, suits and jeans from France and Germany are traded alongside spices, cloth and metalware from across the Mediterranean on flattened cardboard boxes in the streets – and not a French middleman in sight. One block west, the Centre Bourse provides a stark contrast in a fiendish giant hypermall of noise, air conditioning and over-lighting – useful, nevertheless, for mainstream shopping. Behind it is the Jardin des Vestiges, where the ancient port extended, curving northwards from the present quai des Belges. Excavations have revealed a stretch of the Greek port and bits of the city wall with the base of three square towers and a gateway, dated to the second or third century BC. In the Centre Bourse complex, the Musée d'Histoire de Marseille (Mon–Sat noon–7pm; €2) presents the rest of the finds, including a third-century wreck of a Roman trading vessel. Further along La Canebière, where it crosses place de la Bourse, is the Musée de la Marine (Wed–Sun 10am–6pm; €2), housed on the ground floor of the Neoclassical stock exchange and filled with intricate models and paintings of ships on the high seas.
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