CASTLE OF LA BUZINE
MARCEL PAGNOL

CULTURAL, TOURIST AND CINEMATOGRAPHIC SITE IN MARSEILLE

Located in the heart of a valley between Saint-Menet and les Camoins, in a vast park of four hectares surrounded by seven hills, (we are in the 11th arrondissement of Marseille),the Château de La Buzine, which owes its name to a noble owner in the seventeenth century named Henry de Buzens, was bought in 1941 by Marcel Pagnol who recognizes the castle whose guardian and dog frightened his mother during his childhood on the holiday path... and that makes it a City of Cinema, a kind of real "Hollywood Provençal" with sets, accommodation for the whole team, workshops, hostel, ....

"La Buzine" is the emblem of the Provençal bastides of the time.
These are still in the eighteenth century agricultural estates, often relatively difficult to access.
With the nineteenth century, the breakthrough of roads, boulevards and avenues, they become holiday resorts for the bourgeois, merchants or shipowners, and gradually tend to become even their main residence. The breakthrough of the Canal de Marseille and the gradual appearance of means of motor transport will accelerate this trend.
Their rich owners will then endow them with more and more luxurious elements, which is why many of them present an "ostentatious architecture" with different styles; and the Buzine is a perfect example: it presents on one side a Louis XIII style façade and on the other a façade described as "Romano-Byzantine".
You will find that in general, these houses are located at the end of a wooded alley and facing south. Their gardens and landscapes were a setting that the owners maintained with care: they hired rockers and landscapers who thanks to the arrival of water expressed all their art.

After the war, "la Buzine" was abandoned for several years,and when the City of Marseille bought it in the 80s, it was in ruins, without a roof or frame. And it is the Firm of Architecture and Urbanism Stern International that will be chosen to give it new life, and which will make cohabit in the stone tradition and modernity.

Today, the Château de la Buzine has become the House of Cinematography of the Mediterranean

These are "Sorties Projections Ciné", workshops and shows all year round. Call for programming.
These are permanent exhibitions
Tribute to Marcel Pagnol
The Cité du Cinéma Chère in Pagnol
On the other side of Time... the Buzine from 1901 to 1920
A Day in the Mediterranean

These are temporary exhibitions
Space of expression to contemporary creation: painters, sculptors, photographers ...

It is a Media Library with rich film archives

And of course a Shop,for those who want to take with them a small piece of Pagnol... It is also a beautiful park of more than four hectares bordered by hills. Call the Château to find out the opening hours to access it.

Note a Health Trail in a natural area of 12 hectares, next to the park of La Buzine, decorated with a Mediterranean vegetation with particularly rich species and scents: Aleppo pines, holm oaks, rosemary and sids. Descend to the bottom of the valley, under the majestic cedars, the centenary arbutus trees, the romantic deciduous trees, near the baroque waterfall, testimony of the great era of the Rocailleurs of the nineteenth century. Located in front of the kindergarten, in the lower part of the park of La Buzine, this hill offers many paths of shaded walks in the middle of nature that lead back to the Château de la Reynarde.

Finally, know that the Château de la Buzine can be visited. For about three quarters of an hour, you will leave in the footsteps of Pagnol,to discover the Castle and its park.
These guided toursare carried out exclusively for groups or associations at certain times and under certain conditions. Call the Château to find out how to do it.