Vauban district

The Vauban district occupies a city slope above the lower streets. At the upper end of the boulevard, a reservoir once operated at an elevation of ninety-three meters above sea level, holding two thousand cubic meters of water. After it appeared, new streets were laid out here and small houses were built for workers and craftspeople. Stone stairways, narrow passageways, and retaining walls still link them to the city below.

In Marseille, travioles are the short routes that cut across regular streets: winding lanes, passageways, and stairways. The word itself is related to the expression “to go crookedly.” They were laid out in Vauban not for picturesque effect. They appeared because people needed to connect houses on a steep slope that the city had long been unable to settle.

Even in the middle of the seventeenth century, almost nothing was built here. Rainwater quickly drained away through the hard limestone, and there was no way to raise it to higher ground. In the summer of eighteen thirty-four, the situation became desperate: springs and wells dried up, and each Marseillais had about a liter of water a day. Fights broke out at distribution points, which had to be guarded by soldiers. At the same time, a cholera epidemic began in the city.

Mayor Maximin-Dominique Consolat pressed for one thing: to bring water from the Durance to Marseille, although dozens of kilometers of rugged terrain lay between the river and the city. He persuaded the city council to borrow money for a canal. The first loan was ten million francs; it was repaid in part through a tax on flour and bread. Literally, water for future districts was paid for out of the daily loaf.

Engineer Franz Mayor de Montricher was tasked with finding a route for the water through mountains and valleys. Builders had to bore tunnels and carry aqueducts across ravines. In eighteen forty-nine, the water reached Longchamp. By then Consolat was no longer mayor, but he chaired the canal commission and accompanied the flow into the city—he lived to see the outcome of the decision for which Marseille had paid for more than ten years.

The water was then distributed to reservoirs on the city’s heights. One was built here, at the upper end of Boulevard Vauban: two thousand cubic meters at an elevation of ninety-three meters above sea level. After that, new streets began to be laid out on the slope. Small houses for workers and craftspeople occupied the upper part. It was impossible to continue a straight grid over such terrain: neighboring levels were linked by stairways and short passageways. That is how travioles became everyday routes between home, the shop, and the streets below.

The reservoir and the boulevard bore the name of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban; it then became the name of the whole district. Vauban was Louis XIV’s general commissioner of fortifications and sought to strengthen the defenses of Marseille’s port. He inspected them in sixteen seventy-nine and seventeen oh one, criticized the existing forts, and drew up a new plan. The king did not carry out most of his proposals, and the engineer had nothing to do with the lanes here.

The small houses, stairways, and travioles of the working-class district on the slope have survived. You still have to go crookedly along them—following the water that was once brought up here from the plain.