THE RADIANT CITY - LE CORBUSIER

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

"LA CITÉ RADIEUSE" is known by the number "LE CORBUSIER", because it is the work of the Swiss architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret *.
It is also called by the marseillai "THE HOUSE OF FADA" because they find that this building is not very normal.

This imposing and massive construction built immediately "after the war" (1947-1951), has indeed two great originalities:

From an architectural point of view first, its plastic richness and visual effects. Built in the form of a bar on stilts, in the form of flared legs with a brutalist appearance, it tries to concretize a new form of city, a "vertical village" called "Housing Unit".

From a social point of view, an exceptional organization that will become a "laboratory" for a housing system. What is called "a housing unit", whose principle is to concentrate in one place everything that may be necessary for an autonomous collective housing: of course comfortable and modern apartments whose layouts are very innovative (337 apartments of 23 different types), but also an interior street with shops, offices, a bookstore and publishing house, a nursery, a bar, a restaurant, and a hotel, a kindergarten is planned on the last level, and a gymnasium that has now become "the MAMO" Centre for Contemporary Art; finally the roof terrace free of access to the public, with a relaxation area with children's pool, playgrounds and an auditorium for outdoor shows sheltered by a windbreak wall. To do absolutely, it is one of the beautiful views of Marseille.

So we understand why "La Cité radieuse" is classified as a Historic Monument.
Moreover, this type of building has even made school, since Le Corbusier built other radiant cities in the fifties on the model of Marseille, in Rezé-Nantes, Firminy, Briey and Berlin.

You can visit the Cité Radieuse with a guide-lecturer (this is not possible on public holidays), and discover the bowels of this monument: the Hall, the shopping street, a Corbusier type apartment classified as a Historic Monument, the roof terrace, the vegetable garden ... . For this it is imperative to call the Marseille Tourist Office to book your visit.

You can also visit it for yourself : access is free for the common areas (The Hall, the shopping street on the 3rd floor, the roof terrace and its magnificent view of Marseille). You only buy tickets at the entrance if you want to access the MAMO (Centre d'Art Contemporain).

CALL QUICKLY TO BOOK YOUR VISIT WITH A TOUR GUIDE!

* "LE CORBUSIER", Charles-Edouard Jeanneret
the architect is caricatured as the terror of the right angle and the fanatic of the "white", he especially made the curves and polychrome universes sing... Architecture and urban planning are for him particularly sensitive areas, which closely affect the political, the social, and the daily life of man.

Open on sunday