Yayoi Kusama's spotted trees on the cours Mirabeau Aix en ProvenceThe Marseille-Provence European Capital of Culture programme kicks off with a bang in January 2013. We preview the very best of the events on offer this month.

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For the full programme (though not all pages are translated into English), see the website for Marseille-Provence 2013: European Capital of Culture.

Visitors to Marseille should also head for the new temporary Pavillon M on the place Villeneuve-Bargemon just off the Old Port, which is a primary source of information (the main Tourist Office at 11 la Canebière will be open as usual too).

If you read French, you might be interested in Le Routard Marseille, Provence 2013, capitale européenne de la culture, a very comprehensive book-length guide to what's going on.

12 Jan, 11.00am Marseille-Provence 2013 proper officially starts on the weekend of 12-13 January, and the first event is in Aix en Provence.

Le Routard guide to MP2013Fourteen new artworks by internationally renowned artists, including Huang Yong Ping, Xavier Veilhan, Maurizio Cattelan and Yayoi Kusama (whose distinctive spotted universe will decorate the cours Mirabeau, pictured top left) will be unveiled in the city streets. This contemporary art trail remains in place until 17 February.

At 12.15pm there will be a circus show on the Allées Provençales, just off La Rotonde, and at 1.00pm the Patrouille de France (France's aerobatic formation team) will fly over the region in an aerial ballet choreographed by Kitsou Dubois.

12-13 Jan, nightfall-late Marseille's own contribution to the opening festivities is  - rather typically for this boisterous city - what's being called a "Great Clamour": a wave of sound emanating from everything from foghorns and city sirens to church bells and the general public will waft over the bay into the small hours of the morning, accompanied by street theatre, music, ice sculptures, son et lumière and other events.

The unlikely starting-point for all this, at nightfall (exactly 5.24pm), is the Grand Littoral shopping centre in a northern surburb of Marseille.

Perched on a hill with dramatic views over the bay of Marseille, it will host the departure of a Parade of Lights, a procession of fantastically illuminated industrial and agricultural machinery which will pass through the huge car-park before making its way into central Marseille.

CircusThe Great Clamour chimes up at 7pm sharp and there will be bursts of sound from disparate groups of people all over the city. Click here to view an interactive map of where to hear all the Great Clamours in Marseille.

Among the many spectacles in Marseille throughout the evening, one of the highlights, pictured, promises to be a magical circus performance with an angelic theme given by Les Studios de Cirque on the place Estienne d'Orves, at 8pm and again at 11pm.

The Marseille metro will run late into the night for the occasion and late-night train services to Aix, Avignon, Toulon and the Blue Coast are also promised.

13 Jan, from 11am The Opéra de Marseille is offering four free concerts, three of chamber music and one, by the Marseille Philharmonic Orchestra, of symphonic pieces with a Mediterranean theme, including Berlioz' The Trojans and Bizet's L'Arlésienne suite.

Opera de MarseilleTickets need to be picked up in advance at the Opéra ticket office from 13 December onwards.

13 Jan, 10am-4pm Apart from that, the first Sunday of Marseille-Provence European Capital of Culture is a family-oriented day with 120 regionally-themed treasure hunts (punningly called Chasses au 13'Or) organised in outlying towns from La Ciotat to Istres, Salon de Provence and Gardanne.

Click here for an interactive map of the treasure hunts on 13 January (you can also register to take part on this site). Prizes for each hunt will be distributed at Arles, where....

13 Jan, at nightfall The opening ceremonies reach their climax with a fireworks display on the banks of the Rhône river at Arles orchestrated by the master-pyrotechnicians Groupe F.

Opening weekend Several of Marseille's major brand-new exhibition spaces won't be quite ready. The Musée Regards de Provence, a new centre of provençal art, will launch its first show on 1 March, but the building is open to the public this weekend. On 13 January, it's also possible to visit the city's futuristic showcase museum, the MuCEM (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations), designed by Rudy Ricciotti. The MuCEM opens permanently in the early summer.

12 Jan-17 March The world-famous film director Agnès Varda might have been born in Belgium but she has very long ties to Southern France.

Metro La Rose by Agnes VardaVarda's grandmother came from a Marseille family. And, as a young photographer at the start of her career, she captured the early days of the Avignon Festival in a series of iconic shots.

Varda also did a photo-reportage on Marseille in 1956, including a shot on the roof of the then-new architectural project by Le Corbusier, The Radiant City. Her first film, La Pointe Courte (1955), takes place just along the coast near Sète.

 

 

For MP2013, Varda was invited to devise a show at the Galerie d'Art du Conseil Général on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix en Provence which features some of her early work as well as freshly minted installations and photographs celebrating the region.

There is, Varda says, a current vogue for sad and empty, "uninhabited" photos, but her typically warm and witty new shots of Marseille for the show put people at the heart of the image.

The motifs play on the place names of the city, with baskets in the Panier (Old Town - the name means, literally, "basket") and roses in the La Rose district at the end of one of Marseille's metro lines, pictured. And she recreates that 1956 Radiant City shot with some of today's radiant citizens.

12 Jan-17 March Following her nine-month residency in Aubagne, the Lebanese-Palestine installation artist Mona Hatoum is staging a show at the Chapelle des Pénitents Noirs, Aubagne. Hatoum is also participating in the show Ici, Ailleurs in Marseille (see below).

12 Jan-7 April A new gallery space, the Tour Panorama at La Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille's northern suburbs, hosts Ici, Ailleurs (Here, Elsewhere) a show of contemporary art exploring themes of identity, citizenship, emigration and exile and the self and the other, including work by Gilles Barbier, Mounir Fatmi, Ange Leccia, Sarkis and Djamel Tatah. Read more about the Tour Panorama.

J1 Marseille, architect's impression12 Jan-18 May Mediterranées (Mediterraneans) takes you on a virtual odyssey around eleven ports on the Mediterranean from Troy to Marseille.

It's at the J1 Hangar (pictured), another new venue converted from a huge former ferry terminal at the heart of Marseille's bustling port area. It boasts a 6,000 square metre / 64,500 square foot visitor centre with a bar and restaurant overlooking the bay as well as a large gallery space. Read more about the J1 Hangar.

12 Jan-13 April Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) is an exhibition at the Musée Granet in Aix en Provence inspired by the Surrealists' famous "exquisite corpse" game, a sort of artistic version of Chinese Whispers.

Two years in the making, the show consists of a work produced collectively with each artist reacting to the creation immediately preceding his or her own.

The participating painters, sculptors, photographers, video directors, choreographers and composers hail from around the Mediterranean and the Near East, from countries as diverse as Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Spain, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.

12 January-15 April In classical antiquity a "treasure" was a small, richly sculpted building intended to house precious objects. One of these was offered to the gods at Delphi by the inhabitants of Marseille in the sixth century BC, when the city was already a powerful port.

Exhibited for the first time outside Greece, 29 surviving fragments of Le Trésor des Marseillais (The Treasure of Marseille) are on view at the Vieille Charité, Marseille, while a 3D recreation will help visitors visualise the whole thing. 

The surrounding galleries will house Vestiges, a series of panoramic images of archeological sites all around the Mediterranean by the Magnum photographer Josef Koudelka.

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12 Jan-24 March César et les Secrets du Rhône (Caesar and the Secrets of the Rhône) showcases the rich Roman history of Arles and the surrounding area. At the Archives et Bibliothèque départmentales Gaston-Defferre, 18-20 rue Mirès, 13003 Marseille.

16-19 Jan El Djoudour (Roots) by the French-born dancer-choreographer Abou Lagraa explores his family's country of origin, Algeria. At the Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix en Provence.

24-27 January As part of Radio France's Présences Festival, four evenings of concerts will feature the Orchestre Philharmonique, the Radio France Choir, the Musicatreize ensemble, the Egyptian Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain and the 2e2m ensemble.

Performances will include pieces by Henri Tomasi (Retour à Tipasa, inspired by Albert Camus' L'été), Zad Multaka, Ahmed Essyad and Ibrahim Maalouf. Also at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix.

24 Jan-24 Feb The circus is coming to town. Or rather, ten international circuses are coming to fourteen towns all across Provence to give 50 spectacular shows between 24 January and 24 February. It's part of the Cirque en Capitales programme, one of the first major events of Marseille-Provence 2013 European City of Culture.

There are two thematic threads to the programme. "Magic", both new and traditional, and "Clowns", and so you can select the shows you want to go to depending on whether you're looking for thrills or comedy.

Cahin Caha circus, MarseilleThe circus companies performing in Provence for Cirque en Capitales are Cirkus Cirkör (Sweden), Cahin-caha (France), Cirk La Putyka (Czech Republic), Pré-O-Coupé (France), Cirque InExtremiste (France), ON - Orit Nevo (Israel), Rouge Eléa (France), Karakasa Circus (Italy, Russia, Roumania), Anomalie and Dorina Fauer (France) and Morosof (France, Brazil, Argentina).

Their shows will be held in a range of venues from conventional theatres to big tops and even, weather permitting, the streets in the following cities, towns and villages: Marseille, Aix en Provence, Martigues, Arles Saint Rémy de Provence, Fuveau, Rousset, Pertuis, Lambesc, Vitrolles, Port de Bouc, Istres, La Seyne sur Mer and Boulbon. Pictured: Cahin Caha.

After Cirque en Capitales ends, there's also a homage to Pierre Bidon, the hugely influential founder of the cult circus troupe Archaos, one of the ensembles that invented the "new circus movement" and redefined traditional circus arts. Performers from around the world will come to Arles to create brand-new numbers dedicated to Bidon. 8-10 March. Website with the full programme for Cirque en Capitales

Click here to read our February diary for Marseille-Provence 2013 European Capital of Culture.

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