Marseille: The Palais Longchamp, A Monument Built On Water

Despite the name, this is not a palace but an extravagant, extraordinary monument to the glory of water and its  indispensible importance to Marseille ever since the city was founded by the Greeks as a trading port in 600 BC. With an average of only two days of rain a month in the midsummer, drought has been a perennial problem for the city (it is, of course, the central theme of Marcel Pagnol's famous stories, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources). Click here to read more.