#publisher World news RSS feed France RSS feed François Hollande RSS feed Europe RSS feed Culture RSS feed Museums RSS feed Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off * Jump to content [s] * Jump to comments [c] * Jump to site navigation [0] * Jump to search [4] * Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK US AU * Your activity * Email subscriptions * Account details * Linked services Profile Mobile About us * About us, * Contact us * Press office * Guardian Print Centre * Guardian readers' editor * Observer readers' editor * Terms of service * Privacy policy * Advertising guide * Digital archive * Digital edition * Guardian Weekly * Buy Guardian and Observer photos Today's paper * Main section * Comment * Sport * New Review * Magazine * Observer Tech Monthly * Observer Food Monthly Subscribe The Guardian home * News * Sport * Comment * Culture * Business * Money * Life & style * Travel * Environment * Tech * TV * Video * Dating * Offers * Jobs * News * World news * France Mediterranean civilisations museum feted as turning point for Marseille French city still notorious for gun crime and drug smuggling welcomes opening of Mucem * Share * Tweet this * * [pin_it_button.png] * * Email * Angelique Chrisafis in Marseille * * theguardian.com, Monday 3 June 2013 18.45 BST Jump to comments (…) The Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations The Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations, by architect Rudy Ricciotti. Photograph: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Photograph: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images At the mouth of Marseille's old port, against the blue of the Mediterranean sits a mysterious dark cube draped in a giant concrete net â an audacious new architectural emblem for a port city desperate to shake off its stereotypes as the French capital of Kalashnikovs, gang wars, drug-smuggling, political corruption and football mania. After more than a decade of delays and political wrangling, Tuesday will see the grand opening by François Hollande of Mucem, France's new Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations. The â¬191m project is the first museum in the world dedicated to Mediterranean civilisations and culture, and the first standalone French "national museum" ever to be located outside the centralised cultural grandeur of Paris. Mucem is not just the centrepiece of Marseille's 2013 stint as European capital of culture, which aims to attract 10 million visitors this year, despite the bad press over six gangland gun deaths and one fatal stabbing since January and various sleaze investigations including a popular local Socialist MP recently given a jail sentence for buying votes. Marseille won the capital of culture tag by arguing that the real cultural questions facing Europe today were "migration, racism, gender relations, religion, ecology". Mucem, which aims for 300,000 visitors a year, is a celebration of a cosmopolitan, ethnically mixed city, proud that its housing estates did not erupt in riots like the Paris suburbs in 2005. But although it doesn't have the ghettoes of Paris, it has more unemployment and poverty. For years, as the symbolic Mucem project snaked its way through the highest levels of the French state, from the Socialist government of 2000 that conceived it as a return of national culture to the provinces, via Nicolas Sarkozy, who saw it as a symbol of his ill-fated political "Mediterranean union", the question has been, what would actually be displayed inside. The museum inherited a vast collection from Paris's old Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, an ethnographic and folklore museum once known as the Louvre of the people. But there was a fear that the era of what Le Monde scathingly described as hanging folk objects from nylon string needed to be reinvented. On Monday, curators argued that Mucem, far from delivering platitudes about sun and sea, would use modern museum design to tackle all the uncomfortable truths, violent histories and cultural exchanges of a region stretching from Spain to Israel and back via the southern Balkans, Turkey and north Africa. The permanent exhibition traced a line from rural European farming to religion in Jerusalem and issues of human rights. The key temporary exhibition, Le Noir et le Bleu, traced the Mediterranean dream and nightmare from Napoleon in Egypt to Miró paintings, the Italian mafia and bloodshed in Beirut and Sarajevo. A second exhibition traced the history of gender in the Mediterranean. Bruno Suzzarelli, the museum's director, said: "The Mediterranean for me is a meeting point ⦠but it's also a type of conflict. This museum will allow different ideas of the Mediterranean to meet." Central to the rebelliousness of the project was the building's provocative designer, Rudy Ricciotti, the enfant terrible of French architecture. Born in Algeria, the French architect said he carried the Mediterranean curse of perpetual travel, "a fracture which never heals". The museum is built on Marseille's disused pier, where migrants often had their first glimpse of the city, and a rooftop walkway links it to the 17th-century Fort Saint-Jean, open to the public for the first time. Ricciotti described his building full of dappled, fragmented light as a "vertical kasbah", an "architecture of resistance against imperialist mythology". He said it would restore calm to Marseille after the city had taken such a whipping in the national media in recent years. The architect said: "The whole world directs hatred at Marseille, it's like a kind of Quasimodo, it takes hit after hit and just smiles back, it doesn't understand the hatred so it just replies with an enigmatic stare. Culture is an element of peaceâmaking." Daily Email close Sign up for the Guardian Today Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. Sign up for the daily email * Print this Print this * Share * Contact us Send to a friend Close this popup Sender's name ____________________ Recipient's email address ____________________ Send Your IP address will be logged Share Close this popup Short link for this page: http://gu.com/p/3gac4 * StumbleUpon * reddit * Tumblr * Digg * LinkedIn * Google Bookmarks * del.icio.us * livejournal * Facebook * Twitter Contact us Close this popup * Report errors or inaccuracies: userhelp@theguardian.com * Letters for publication should be sent to: letters@theguardian.com * If you need help using the site: userhelp@theguardian.com * Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard: +44 (0)20 3353 2000 * + Advertising guide + License/buy our content Article history About this article Close this popup Mediterranean civilisations museum feted as turning point for Marseille This article was published on the Guardian website at 18.45 BST on Monday 3 June 2013. It was last modified at 00.00 BST on Tuesday 4 June 2013. World news * France · * François Hollande · * Europe Culture * Museums More news * Share * Tweet this * * * Email Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on theguardian.com because you don't have JavaScript enabled. Today's best video * Kennedy riding in Dallas motorcade JFK: former secret service agent relives assassination Former secret service agent Clint Hill gives his account of the day John F Kennedy died as the US marks 50 years since Kennedy's assassination * Doctor Who 50th anniversary title sequences Doctor Who theme re-recorded New recording marks the series' 50th anniversary * Bayern Munich's Franck Ribbery Bayern Munich recreate Borussia Dortmund stunt Players recreate trick on board team bus * Ricky Gervais, Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog Muppets Most Wanted The Muppets return with a new adventure. 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