Visit Castle of If in Marseille … nothing could be easier from the charming guest rooms in Provence Le Clos Geraldy.
Visit Castle of If, it’s only 45 minutes by car from (plus the 15-minute boat trip) Le Clos Geraldy, charming B&B in Provence at St Maximin la Ste Baume.
But what is this castle? François 1st assigned him a triple goal. Protect the French Mediterranean coast from an invasion. Then to cover the exits and the anchorage to the fleet of royal galleys. And finally to monitor Marseille, attached to the Kingdom of France in 1480.
But it also becomes a state prison. Opponents of power were imprisoned there from 1580 and until 1871, led by Protestants and Republicans.
Finally, it is a world famous mythical place. Alexandre Dumas published Le Comte de Monte-Cristo in 1844. If is the place of detention of the hero, Edmond Dantès. The novel is a huge success: translated around the world, twenty-three films are inspired by it.
When you disembark from the shuttle, you are immediately impressed by the building. When you discover the jails and imagine that people have been locked up there for a long time, too. Finally we discover that some cells had “a certain comfort” with fireplace, window, to accommodate “prisoners of mark”.