Landscapes Hub

Although the Old Port offers the more familiar seaside glimpse of Marseille, we’re here at a part of the coastline roughly four miles south, down the Cote d’Azur. Known as the Prado seaside park, this area offers some of the only sizeable stretches of sand in the Marseille area. (And, as far as we know, the only giant Ferris wheel.) When sunbathers are done here they can explore more of this ancient and storied part of the French Riviera, including the historic city center and surroundings. And we don’t use the word ‘historic’ lightly. It’s estimated the Marseille area has been inhabited for nearly 30,000 years.

Corinthia is a regional unit of Greece, located in the Peloponnese region. Those are the dry geographical facts, but the region’s historical legacy is an altogether more interesting story. World powers began battling for control over this area thousands of years ago. Most were eyeing the strategic Corinth Isthmus connecting the Peloponnese peninsula to mainland Greece. The Ancient Greeks attempted to carve a passage through the land bridge (where’s Zeus when you need him?) for an easier transit of the 8,320-square-mile peninsula. It wasn’t until 1893 that technology caught up with ambition and a canal was dug for maritime passage. The ensuing development in the region has led parts of Corinthia to become essentially suburbs of Athens.

Some four centuries ago, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered that the Milky Way, that great swath of light spread across the night sky, is made up of individual stars. Before this genius peered through his telescope, observers thought the galaxy was a mass of nebulous, cloudy matter. As our telescopes have gotten more powerful, so has our understanding of the place we live in. It took another 300 or so years to disprove the idea that all the stars in the universe were contained in the Milky Way. It’s now believed that our home galaxy is just one of more than 100 billion—and perhaps as many as 2 trillion—galaxies in the observable universe.