Margaret Kemp

If you haven’t been lost in Marseille then you can’t have been there. As Alexandre Dumas wrote, this is a place that is ‘always getting younger as it grows older’. But while you’ll certainly be lost at some point, you won’t be stuck and you won’t be bored. You can meander through the 16 contrasting neighbourhoods, or cross the town easily via metro, bus, bike, tram or even ‘Le petit train de Marseille’ — the Marseille fun train. Head straight to the Old Port (600 bc) where Foster and Partners’ mirrored canopy (2013 ad) gleams in the hot sun, then up the hill to the lovely, listed Intercontinental Hotel Dieu which has great views, a Michelin-starred restaurant and a Clarins spa, but which from 1188 until 1993 served as the city’s main hospital.

Paris’ s top restaurants, the Opéra, Louis Vuitton: rooftop beehives are the latest must-have for the best French addresses. Margaret Kemp samples the sweetness Ever since the achingly chic Left Bank restaurant La Tour d’Argent announced the installation of six beehives on their rooftop overlooking the Seine, beekeeping is the new black in Paris. The Tour’s ‘must have’ honey pots, with notes of linden and lavender, are sold in the restaurant's boutique (www.latourdargent.com) and used by chef-patissier Guillaume Caron in his fig and honey dessert. Pollinating bees thrive in Paris where pesticides are banned, working balconies, parks and tree-lined boulevards.