What’s On Offer in Marseilles

Air travel is all well and good, but those poky Plexiglas windows and fuggy cabins don’t allow for any appreciation of the gloriousness of the French countryside. Now, though, Francophiles can board the Eurostar and (from £99 return) spend six and a half hours ogling at chateaux, vineyards and lavender fields all the way to Marseilles. Launched on May 1, the new high-speed route, which also stops at Lyons and Avignon, is a typically Gallic way to travel to the sun-bleached south of the country — chic, unhurried and, apart from the soggy croque-monsieurs in the buffet car, rather romantic. It certainly isn’t for the time-poor execs who spend their weekends wheeling carry-ons through the business lounge at Nice airport, or for those who would rather not spend a tedious hour at Lille on the return journey going through customs and baggage scans. Judging from the packed carriages and carnival atmosphere on the first journey from St Pancras, the service should be a hit. More than 55,000 tickets have been sold for trips to the end of October — and that’s before the process of refurbishing the existing fleet and adding 17 new trains, plus installing wi-fi in the carriages, begins later this year. Continental estate agents, who are still punch-drunk from the financial crisis, tax hikes and, lately, the worrying lack of Russian buyers (there are even whispers that hard-up oligarchs are being forced to sell their Riviera boltholes), are hoping that the five-times-a-week service will help to rekindle the British love affair with French property. “International buyers have started to come back this year, led by the Brits,” says Mark Harvey, partner and head of the team covering France, Monaco and the Alps at Knight Frank estate agency. Harvey says 28% of Knight Frank’s inquiries in 2014 came from UK buyers; so far this year, they have accounted for almost half. So, what has changed? Currency, for one: the pound is 11% stronger against the euro than it was this time last year (notwithstanding any post-election bounce), and there is a perception that parts of the country are a safe haven for investment. It is understood that the Qatari royal family are now buying properties in the south of France, the first time they have purchased outside Monaco. “This is a big confidence boost to the market,” says Giles Hannah, senior vice-president of Christie’s International Real Estate. House prices have also come down, in some cases as much as 35% from peak levels. François-Xavier de Vial, director of the buying agency Home-Hunts, believes that the perception of François Hollande and his tax policies has also changed. “The introduction of wealth tax caused us a lot of problems at the beginning, and put buyers off. Now they understand that it can be mitigated using a mortgage.” French loan rates have dropped to all-time lows. It is now possible to secure a rate of 2.55% fixed over 20 years, down from 3.5% in May 2014. This translates to a saving of more than €45,700 (£33,700) in interest over the life of a €400,000 loan, according to French Private Finance. “The Eurostar route isn’t going to transform the market, but it should give some areas a boost,” says Nic Brennan, associate director of the global private portfolio at Savills estate agency. “It also gives you options. Dare I say, French air-traffic control has been a nightmare these past few months.” Avignon Much more than simply the site of a famous bridge, this walled city is still blessed with the graceful architecture and self-confidence of a one-time seat of papal power. Today, its well-kept cobbled streets radiate a distinctly 21st-century edge, with fashionable boutiques, wholefood shops and small, yappy dogs toted round in designer handbags. Though Flybe offers services to Avignon from some UK airports, and it is possible to fly to Marseilles, the new Eurostar line offers another way in — if you treat yourself to a standard premier ticket (from £199 return), you can arrive fed, watered and with scarcely a crease in your chinos in 5hr 49min. “You can also take home a lot more wine and cheese,” points out David Kampfner, regional co-ordinator at Leggett Immobilier estate agency — Eurostar allows two suitcases per person, plus a piece of hand luggage. Buying in town means you have the attractive option of being able to let your property for Avignon’s renowned arts festival in July; helpfully, the requirement for foreign owners to pay a “social charge” of 15.5% on rental income and capital gains was recently overturned by the European Court of Justice. A design-conscious home with three bedrooms and a 650 sq ft terrace, within walking distance of the TGV station, is on the market for €690,000 (020 8144 5501, home-hunts.com). The new train service also allows easy access to the landscape around Avignon — the sleepy, pine-scented Provence of vineyards and blue-shuttered homes immortalised by Peter Mayle. This is the ultimate middle-class nirvana, where Britons can buy a charming old farmhouse for €500,000, earning them summers in the sunshine, an enviable wine cellar and crucial bragging rights among the PTA. A 20-minute drive from Avignon, the quiet, narrow streets of the medieval village of Barbentane are free from cars and tourists and smell pleasantly of jasmine. A restored stone house in the centre with two bedrooms, a terrace, useful parking space and a wine cellar is on sale for €529,000 (00 33 4 90 54 73 76, colpaertwehrle.com). And then, of course, there is Aix-en-Provence, a brainy pocket of the Parisian Left Bank but with prettier gardens, sparklier fountains and a Latin joie de vivre. You can see why the French themselves voted the stomping ground of Zola and Cézanne the most desired French town in which to live: your neck aches from looking at the endless grand bourgeois mansions, while the biggest stress is deciding whether to buy cherry or plum tomatoes from the picturesque market. As you’d expect, properties in Aix don’t come cheap — particularly if you want to be close to the plane-tree-lined Cours Mirabeau. A two-bedroom flat in a converted townhouse in the Mazarin district, so close to Mirabeau that you can almost smell the cappuccinos and expensive cologne, is on the market for €1.3m (home-hunts.com). For those with bulkier budgets, an 18th-century manor house within striking distance of the centre costs €2.995m. That gets you six bedrooms, six bathrooms and 2.29 acres of beautiful gardens, a swimming pool and even your own fountain (020 7861 5034, knightfrank.com). Marseilles France’s second city has 2,600 years of history, and almost as many prejudices stacked against it. For too long synonymous with drugs, gangs and violence, Marseilles is visibly sloughing off its old, seamier skin and growing a glittering new one. Over the past decade, more than €660m has been ploughed into this sunbaked Mediterranean spot, which was crowned the 2013 European Capital of Culture. Norman Foster, the starchitect behind Wembley Stadium and the Gherkin, has helped to reimagine the Vieux Port, pedestrianising much of it in a gentle pale granite to echo the shade of the original limestone cobbles and adding the gleaming, reflective Ombrière, a “shadow place” that offers much-needed shade to broiled tourists and craggy fishermen hawking the fruit of their nets. Visitors throng an embarrassment of new museums, especially the cubelike Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM), with its dark, filigree-effect concrete casting a lacy shadow, while the beautiful people sip espressos in the chic cafes that have sprung up of late. Smaller touches such as restoring streetlights, cleaning the facades of the imposing Napoleon III buildings and sensitive urban planting have also made the place feel cared for, helping to alter its French Connection stereotype — though a new Netflix series set in the city due to air later this year could set things back. Billed as a cross-Channel House of Cards, we are promised drug lords, corruption and a power struggle between the city’s veteran mayor and a young politician looking to usurp him. So, the exact opposite of the squeaky-clean new vision the tourist board is trying to portray. “Being capital of culture has transformed Marseilles, not only changing the urban planning, but altering the mind-set of people,” insists Anne Marie d’Estienne d’Orves, the city’s deputy mayor for culture. “More tourists come every year.” Overseas property buyers are also starting to trickle in to the area, which boasts an appealing 300 days of sunshine a year. Nevertheless, most are focusing on less edgy locations. “Cassis, a pretty seaside resort a 35-minute drive from Marseilles, is an undiscovered jewel,” says Kampfner of Leggett Immobilier, who is selling a 19th-century townhouse with five bedrooms, a pool and a garden, in the centre of the port for €3.6m (frenchestateagents.com). “It has long been popular with the wealthy French, who go there for the weekend, but we are now starting to get some international buyers, attracted by the fact that it’s at least half the price of the Côte d’Azur.” For those braver buyers who want to dive into the beating heart of Marseilles, the surest spots to look include the old port. Here, up an old-fashioned private lift, is a two-bedroom duplex with glorious 360-degree views of the sea and the city’s most evocative landmarks, from the Cité Radieuse — Le Corbusier’s ground-breaking modernist housing block, a beacon of rough-cast concrete and collaborative, harmonious living, which is pending designation as a Unesco world heritage site — to the two-tone basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde. That vista gives the property, which has a large terrace but needs some cosmetic work, a hefty price tag of €890,000 (home-hunts. com); in cheaper areas, a similar-sized flat could be found for €200,000. Slightly further from the coast, near the peachy bulk of the Abbey of St Victor, is a tropical labyrinth of a home built like a riad around a 1,300 sq ft courtyard filled with lush plants, and a jade-green swimming pool in the centre. Bought by a couple of interior designers 12 years ago, when it was a derelict printing factory, it has been turned into an achingly hip home, stashed with midcentury-modern furniture and upcycled tchotchkes. As far from the Provençal gingham- tablecloth, shabby-chic stereotype as you can imagine, the townhouse typifies the “bobo” (bourgeois bohème) revolution rippling through Marseilles — the five ensuite bedrooms are let out to design-conscious guests for up to €200 a night. It’s on the market at €2.1m; the estate agent tells me that an English architect is already keen to buy it, but “needs to convince his wife” (home-hunts.com). That marital coercion sums up the essence of Marseilles, which is still gritty and brusque, immortalised in the press as France’s murder capital thanks to the drugs gangs, which have a habit of bumping off their business associates with Kalashnikovs. The hulking presence of Algerian ships in the gleaming new port symbolise the racial and economic tensions in a city that is riven between its more prosperous south and the poorer, more African north. Marseilles is also an unproven market as far as the British are concerned — a factor that could either be a blessing or a burden. “The face of the city has changed completely — it’s quite bourgeois now,” says de Vial of Home-Hunts, a Parisian who has lived in the city for more than a decade and become its ardent champion. “It’s a bit like Liverpool — people either love it or hate it.” This story was originally published in The Sunday Times.