Château d'if (Marseille, France) - history, excursions, expositions. Exact address, phone number, cost of entrance tickets. Local legends and ghosts.
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| Château d'if Marseille |
"An annoying neighbor" - this is how the inhabitants of Marseille called the Château d'if, they did not like the fact that there is a fortress not far from the city. It was hastily built in 1524-1531 by order of the King of France Francis I, the castle was intended to protect against attacks from the sea, and became a gloomy prison.
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| Château d'if Marseille |
Despite the fact that the Château d'if was built as a military fortress, it has never been attacked and is perfectly preserved.
Château d'if has never been attacked. Even King Charles V of Spain, who was preparing to attack Marseille in 1536, changed his mind, perhaps by looking at the fortress. But it only looked impressive, in fact, they built it in haste, the walls are laid out carelessly, with numerous violations and not as reliable as they look.
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| Château d'if Marseille |
But the castle turned out to be an ideal place for keeping prisoners: isolation and dangerous coastal streams made escape almost impossible. In 1580 the fortress became a state prison. The dungeons contained Huguenots, politicians, leaders of the Paris Commune, as well as persons who represented a danger to the country.
During the persecution of Protestants by Catholics, the prison was used for the imprisonment of noble prisoners. For a fee, they were allowed to freely communicate and walk on the landing of the main tower. There was no light in the lower chambers, which did not allow air to pass through well, where it was cold in winter and terribly stuffy in summer, there was no light, the poor fell into it.
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| Château d'if Marseille |
But the most famous prisoners in the history of Château d'if were the mysterious prisoner Iron Mask and Edmond Dantes, the hero of Alexandre Dumas's novel The Count of Monte Cristo. It was these strange persons (one had never been to the Château d'if, the second is generally a fictional character) who brought popularity to the gloomy fortress. Today, the mysterious Château d'if is a visiting card of Marseille. Guided tours are held here. On the ground floor there is a chamber named after Dantes, and in it is the laz of Abbot Faria. In the novel, he undermined and mistakenly made a move to the chamber of Dantes, to whom he later became a friend and teacher.
A television is installed in the cell, on the screen of which a scene of the meeting of the heroes of Dumas' novel from various films is shown.
On the second floor of the castle, there is a chamber in which the Iron Mask was located. There is a cafe on the island with a beautiful view of Marseille.