Antique Postcard Marseille: The Old Port Entrance Pass
Geographic description:
This antique postcard Marseille shows the “passe” of the Old Port, the narrow channel through which ships enter and leave the historic harbour of the city. The caption printed at the bottom of the card leaves no doubt about the subject: “194. MARSEILLE. – La passe du Vieux Port. – LL”, with the additional mark “Selecta” printed in the lower right corner. The photograph was taken from an elevated position, most likely from the heights of Fort Saint-Nicolas or a similar vantage point on the southern shore, allowing the full width of the harbour entrance to be captured in a single frame.
On the left side of the image stands a large multi-storey building in a Second Empire style, isolated on a green promontory surrounded by a low wall and gravel paths cut into the lawn. Its massive proportions, regularly spaced windows, and commanding position above the sea correspond to the known characteristics of the Pharo Palace, a residence begun in 1858 for Empress Eugénie on the Teste-More promontory, overlooking the entrance to the Old Port. This identification remains a reasoned hypothesis based on the building’s location and architectural style, since no inscription is legible on the structure itself.
On the right, an imposing fortified complex occupies the entire right-hand side of the card: stone ramparts, walls pierced with loopholes, successive terraces, and, at the summit, a round tower crowned with a dome. This ensemble corresponds closely to Fort Saint-Jean, whose famous round Fanal tower, built in the 17th century, still dominates the harbour entrance today. A lighthouse visible in the far right background, on the breakwater, reinforces this reading: it is likely the Grand Phare jetty light or a similar structure marking the channel for incoming vessels.
At the centre of the composition, a two-masted steamship with a single funnel is entering the channel, leaving a clearly visible wake behind it. Further back, a second, larger steamer follows the coastline offshore. Several small lateen-rigged or triangular-sailed boats, together with a few rowing craft, animate the water, reflecting a mixed maritime activity, both commercial and small-scale, typical of the Marseille Old Port in the early twentieth century.
Historical description:
On the historical side, several clues converge to suggest a plausible date range. The “LL” mark printed within the caption refers to the publishing house founded by Léon and Lévy, later Lévy et fils, whose trademark, registered in 1901, identifies a prolific output of real-photo postcards across France. Following the merger with the Neurdein brothers after Isaac Lévy’s death in 1913, the firm became “Lévy et Neurdein réunis”, a mark that remained in use until 1932. The presence of the standalone “LL” mark, without the explicit “Lévy et Neurdein réunis” wording on the front, suggests a printing prior to that merger, and therefore probably before 1913 — though this remains a working hypothesis that cannot be confirmed with certainty without the reverse of the card, which might carry a postmark or an additional publisher’s mention.
The “Selecta” mark associated with the card corresponds, based on usage observed on other cards from the same publishing house, to a local distribution mark or a commercial series tied to a regional retailer, rather than to a second, independent publisher. This detail does not change the proposed dating but confirms that the card was sold locally, likely by a Marseille bookseller or newsagent.
The print type — a sepia-toned photograph, without colour retouching, framed by a discreet white border — matches the standard production of so-called “real-photo” postcards from the early twentieth century, prior to the widespread adoption of colour-tinted cards during the 1920s and 1930s. The absence of any visible motor vehicle on the card, even though the viewpoint could plausibly have shown some along the quays had the photograph been taken somewhat later, is an additional, if weak, indication — in the absence of any close urban foreground — favouring a date before the widespread arrival of automobiles in Marseille, that is, before roughly 1910-1920.
Without the reverse of the card, no information about the sender, the recipient, the postmark, or the stamp can be used for dating purposes: the proposed range, roughly between 1900 and 1913, therefore remains a working hypothesis grounded in the publisher’s mark and the photographic style, not a documented certainty. Further verification through the Marseille municipal archives or a specialised antique postcard database would help narrow this estimate.
From an urban history perspective, this view illustrates the importance of the Old Port channel as a checkpoint and monitoring point for Marseille shipping before the construction of the large modern basins at La Joliette, located further north and designed for high-tonnage commercial traffic. At the time, the Old Port itself remained the beating heart of the city, combining fishing, coastal trade, and the early stages of seaside tourism, before its commercial role gradually declined in favour of the new twentieth-century port basins. This antique postcard Marseille therefore stands as a valuable record of a harbour landscape that has since been largely transformed.
