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Marseilles (Municipality, Bouches-du-Rhône, France): House flags
of shipping companies  Last modified: 2013-11-30 by ivan sache
Keywords: marseilles |  See also:  A short history of the port
of Marseilles  It is well-known and historically proved that
Marseilles (then Massalia) was founded by seamen coming from the
Greek town of Phokia, in Asia Minor. The Massaliotes were fiery
seamen, the most famous of them being Pytheas (4th century BP),
who calculated the latitude of Marseilles and sailed up to
Ireland and maybe even further to the north, and Eutymenes. The
maritime power of Massalia ended when the town chose the party
of Pompeius against Julius Caesar and lost its independence. A
new maritime era started with the Crusades and the independence
of the Republic of Marseilles. After the incorporation of
Provence into France in 1481, Marseilles could not afford the
competition with Genoa, Venice, Montpellier and the Spanish
ports and started slowly to de