Letter from Marseilles:The sun had hovered low, a teasing purple plate that eventually dipped into the Marseilles bay. Hungry crowds of Ramadan-observing Muslims emerge, taking nightfall as their cue to break their daylong fast. In homes all over France's second city, they devour couscous and tagines; in simple restaurants they choose steaming bowls of chorba and sip gold-embossed glasses of mint tea. Since morning in the streets off Rue Canebière and around Noailles, Arab butchers had sold halal meat; grocers had weighed out loose semoule and bakers had flicked soft paintbrushes over trays of honey-swimming makroud and baklava cakes to disperse a sticky plague of flies.
Chickens were purchased for eating that evening by many of the city's 200,000 people of North African origin.
By night, the quays on both sides of Marseilles's old port are home to a relaxed line of hotels, bars and restaurants, a far cry from the expected nautical mile of ruddy-faced sea shanty singers, wooden legs and anchor tattoos. The central port area exudes seaside calm, its waters a large marina for hundreds of vessels. But out in the bay, there is a golden glow.
It emanates from the prison island housing the Château d'If, better-known as the place of incarceration of the Count of Monte Cristo. Every day, the Edmond Dantès boat makes almost-hourly journeys to the prison in which Alexandre Dumas's fictional hero was locked up for 14 years.
After a choppy voyage from the mainland, the sandstone prison looms, a fortress built in 1516 to defend Marseilles from those who would attack it. It became a place of detention in 1580 but has been a museum since the end of the 19th century. Although the Count is just a character in a book, a familiar sadness hangs over the cells attributed to him and Abbé Faria, the long-haired iconoclast who spent years boring through the wrong wall only to end up in Dantès's cell, where each night he tries to teach the revenge-crazed man the insights of forgiveness. Dantès bides his time until, taking the dead Abbé's place in a coffin sack, he is hurled from the walls of Château d'If and escapes.
Dumas's novel appeared in 1844 and frames the prison's real misery in its gritty fable. In one cell, a tape loop plays scenes from dramatisations of his tale: 27 films have been made, the first of which was in the US in 1908. And then there is le couloir des oubliettes, a terrifying tunnel etched with the names of prisoners. It leads to a domed room with observation slats at 10am, noon and 2pm. The Mediterranean light stabs in, a taste of what you'd miss if you were ever sentenced to this place.
Information panels and exhibitions display items and facts. There's a Chinese translation of the novel, signed by Gérard Depardieu (star of a recent eight-hour version of the story). And what is all this about Monte Cristo cigars? You learn they are so named because of a literacy programme in a Havana factory: as the workers rolled the tobacco leaves, the inspirational story of Dantès's adventure was read out. And each year since 1999, strong swimmers attempt "the Monte Cristo challenge" to replicate his daring five-kilometre trip to shore. This summer, 400 gave it a shot, the winner making landfall in just 51 minutes.
They were more successful than a poor rhino who, as a present to Pope Leo X from the king of Portugal in 1515, spent time in the vicinity of Château d'If. When its ship continued towards Rome, it sank. Less fortunate than Dantès, the drowned rhino was washed up ashore and only made it to the Vatican via a trip to the taxidermist.
Back on the mainland, it's getting dark around the redeveloped warehouses of the Joliette docks. Work is progressing on the stripy La Major cathedral: to one side, there are two dangerous open troughs, each five metres deep. Tunnelling, it seems, is still the rage. Later, around the earthy Belsunce area, I am accosted by a troubled man. "I don't mean to threaten you," he said in accented French. "Could you help me with a euro? I just got out of prison today."