OCTOBER 2023 · ESCAPE
Marseille - Cours Julien
Cours Julien, Marseille
Cours Julien is south of the centre, downhill from the station, and if Le Panier is the old quarter that became a tourist quarter, Cours Julien is the bohemian quarter that is still, more or less, itself. Record shops. Bars with terraces spilling onto the square. A covered walkway with painted support columns. The scale of the street art here is different — not just tags and stencils but full building facades worked top to bottom in murals, the kind that require scaffolding and planning and permission.
The density of the walls is the first thing. A whole apartment building covered in red, blue, green and white tags, layered over years, the colours fighting and combining. Then a different building: yellow-green with black outlines, the tags extending onto the shutters so the surface reads as a single plane rather than architecture with moveable parts. The painted outdoor staircase down into the main square — red and blue — functions as a gallery in its own right, the art continuing along each riser and up the walls on either side.
TOURIST GO HOME, in red marker on a wall of torn concert posters.
Cours Julien — October 2023
TOURIST GO HOME, in red marker on a wall of torn concert posters. The same phrase appeared in Le Panier. It's almost a slogan now, repeated across the city in the places where the tension between neighbourhood and visitor is most legible. In Cours Julien it sits among murals that have been photographed ten thousand times.
Tree-shaded outdoor seating: green metal chairs, the art on the walls behind, people eating. The square functions normally regardless of the paint.
A narrow street lined with art-covered storefronts and bars, pedestrians walking through it with the indifference of people who live near something notable and have stopped noticing it. That's the other side of the equation.
Vibrant graffiti mural with overlapping tags in red, blue, white and green on Cours Julien wall
Street wall with torn concert posters and graffiti; red marker text reads 'TOURIST GO HOME'
Red and blue painted outdoor stairway lined with graffiti art descending into Cours Julien square
Weathered yellow and green graffiti tags with black outlines on shutters and ground level mural
Colorful layered graffiti covering apartment building facade with red, blue, green and white tags
Wide street view of Cours Julien with graffiti-covered buildings on both sides and scattered pedestrians
Covered walkway with painted support columns and street art murals; people strolling through square
Narrow Cours Julien street lined with art-covered storefronts, bars and galleries; pedestrians walking
Tree-shaded outdoor seating area with green-painted metal chairs and graffiti backdrop