The Transporter and Count of Monte Cristo

The Chateu d'If as we approached by boat.
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The movie "The Transporter" was shot around Marseille and the famous prison "Chateau de If" which was the setting for the book "The Count of Monte Cristo" and therefore the many movie versions of it.  Marseille is the second-largest city in Europe and for a while held the title of the city in Europe with the highest crime rate.  It sounds like they lost the title but it wasn´t clear if this was through improvement or some other city getting even worse.  Overall, we didn´t find the city itself to be particularly attractive given our high expectations of the "French Riviera".  That stated, the level of construction was very high and the Chateau made for a fun trip.  We also were there during the recent riots over the job law that was proposed so the populace might have been a bit grumpier than usual.

The most widely circulated tarot deck comes from Marseille; it is called the Tarot de Marseille, and was used to play the local variant of tarocchi before it came to the notice of people who used it in cartomancy.