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By whichever means you arrive in Marseille - by train at St Charles station, by air at Marignane airport some twenty kilometres northwest of the city, or by car along the sweeping J.F.Kennedy coastal corniche - one thing is certain. You will feel intimidated. Marseille has that kind of effect on first-time visitors. Despite its proximity to the Cote d'Azur, Marseille is a world away from the Provence of the travel posters, light years distant from the glittering promenades of the Riviera. And happy to be so. While other cities cajole, beckon and seduce, Marseille simply sniffs, shrugs and looks the other way. Like Rhett Butler, it's the kind of place that really couldn't give a damn. And never has.

In a roll-call of French cities, Marseille is the rough diamond, France's black sheep. From the moment Greek adventurers arrived at this protected inlet in 600BC and set up a trading post, the city has been resolutely independent, always dancing to its own tune and steering a prosperous, if sometimes choppy, course through history. Among its misfortunes Marseille may have backed the wrong Roman in 49BC, siding with Pompey rather than Caesar during the Roman Civil War, been sacked by Goths, Franks and Saracens more times than it cares to remember, and lost half its population in the Great Plague of 1720, but the city always bounced back. Trade was its life-line, and it was never very long before another ship dropped anchor in its Vieux-Port or raised its sails for some profitable voyage. Servicing the Crusades filled the city's coffers, French colonisation in North Africa and the Far East made it wealthy beyond its dreams and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1893 secured its future as the gateway to Europe. Today Marseille is the eighth largest sea-port in the world, a muscly, mercantile heavyweight with local industries spanning chemicals, oil refining, metallurgy, shipbuilding and food processing.

This ability to look after itself, get by on its own resources, has made Marseille the city it is: haughty, bullish, optimistic. And occasionally dangerous to know. Like any sea-port, Marseille has always been a tough town with its fair share of villainy. When law enforcement agents - and Gene Hackman as 'Popeye' Doyle - set out to crack the French Connection in the early Seventies, France's second-largest city was exposed as a mecca for drug-trafficking, prostitution and racketeering, controlled by an underworld milieu of gangsters and godfathers that made the Corleones look saintly. Not that anyone should be surprised. For years Marseille served as a transit port for Sicilian emigres en route to America, and many a shady character jumped ship and stayed. When it comes to organized crime, what happened in New York and Chicago, happened in Marseille first.

To make matters worse Marseille has also suffered a raft of political and financial scandals, with a record of rigged local elections, politicians on the make and an altogether too cosy camaraderie between the forces of law and disorder. Marseille's predilection for corruption even spread to the soccer pitch. When the home team, L'Olympique de Marseille, won the European Championship in 1993, it was banned from competition the following year for alleged match-fixing and bribery. Add to all this the kind of racial tension you might expect in a city with one of the highest ethnic mixes in the country and Marseille does not come out of it smelling of roses. But then after 2600 years as one of the world's busiest sea-ports it would be surprising if it did.

It is a notoriety Marseille has tried hard to shake off. By and large the city has succeeded, though many visitors to Provence prefer to believe that mud sticks. Which is a mistake. Marseille may be be wild and wilful, but that's half its charm, amply rewarding those prepared to overlook its dubious reputation and downplay their own initial misgivings. As you'd expect from Marseille, it's a trade-off: make the effort and we won't disappoint.

In Marseille everything begins at the Vieux Port, just as it has for centuries. With ferry and tanker fleets long consigned to the Grande Joliette docks beyond the city's northern headland, this ancient harbour is now more pleasure port than working port. Protected by the redundant fortresses of St Jean and St Nicholas, its glittering blue waters are crowded with sail-boats and pleasure craft, its quays and arcades lined with restaurants and cafes, while the quai des Belges, where the first Greeks stepped ashore, is the perfect stage set for Marseille' daily fish-market.

What you see on the loaded trestles and sagging stalls, lining the waterfront here, will end up on a thousand restaurant tables by the end of the day. Traditionally, the ugliest fish - the devilish-looking rascasse and an assortment of other local rock fish - are reserved for Marseille' signature dish, the rich, rust-coloured fish stew called bouillabaisse. A sea-food classic sadly abused by unscrupulous restaurateurs who pass off second-rate "Soupes des pecheurs" and "Bouillabaisses a notre facon" as the real thing, few visitors to the city ever get to taste an authentic bouillabaisse. To redress the balance and protect their authentic bouillabaisse recipe from further exploitation a number of restaurateurs drew up the Charte de la Bouillabaisse Marseillaise. Of the fourteen founding members, nine are in Marseille and only at their tables can you be certain of tasting "La Vraie Bouillabaisse". Look for a Charte de la Bouillabaisse diploma hung proudly on the wall at member restaurants like Le Miramar on the quai du Port and at Chez Fonfon in nearby Vallon des Auffes, but be prepared to pay upwards of 300 francs for the privilege.

For a city with so much history, Marseille seems to have been surprisingly short-changed in terms of architecture and antiquities. Unlike Arles with its colosseum and Nimes with its Roman temples, you'll find few reminders of Greek and Roman occupation here beyond the appropriately-named Jardins des Vestiges, a block or two back from today's Vieux-Port, where excavations have uncovered the remains of a fortified city wall, a road and a stretch of Greek quayside. As for Le Panier, Marseille' oldest quarter, this pre-war warren of Escher-like stepped streets and narrow passageways overlooking the Vieux-Port was effectively razed by a German High Command determined to root out Resistance fighters and other malcontents during the Second World War. Despite the vandalism, however, enough remains to give some flavour of old Marseille, from the 17th-century Hotel de Ville and 16th-century Maison Diamantee to the gothic-renaissance Hotel de Cabre.

But if the fabric of the city has changed, its atmosphere remains undiluted. Indeed, there are moments when you have to remind yourself which side of the Mediterranean you are on. In Le Panier street markets are dark and souk-like and the sellers' cries as likely Arab as French, the summer heat hammering down on La Canabiere is unquestionably north African while the warm breezes that ruffle restaurant, shop and gallery awnings along the Place Jean-Jaures, the Cours Julien and Cours d'Etienne d'Orves carry the sand of the Sahara. In true Mediterranean style Marseille is a city of brisk, business-like mornings and long, sultry afternoons when shutters drop and only fans stir the air. From lunch-time onwards there's a sort of sun-baked slothfulness about the place, what Flaubert called the city's 'oriental indolence', the chalky, limestone facades of mid-morning gently toasting to a tanned and cubist canvas as the sun drops over the Golfe Du Lion.

So, enjoy Marseille. It's a city like no other. Just make sure your taxi driver has the meter running.

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