The MuCEM Marseille under constructionThe seriously big guns roll out this month for MP2013, with several key venues which weren't ready in time for the opening weekend finally being unveiled with major new shows. Watch out for the MuCEM and the flagship two-part exhibition Le Grand Atelier du Midi.

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

Foremost among these is the MuCEM, pictured top left under construction, Rudy Ricciotti's sensationally beautiful design for the Musée des civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée, or Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations.

For the full programme (many, though by no means all, pages are now finally 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).

Le Routard guide to MP2013If 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.

1 June The MP2013 celebrations continue in Aix en Provence with an ambitious spectacle by the street arts and circus company Transe Express.

Trapeze artists, giant opera singers (!), drummers and rock groups and an aerial chariot procession will perform a "Celestial Concert".

The parades will start at 8.30pm in central Aix around the Cours Mirabeau, climaxing in an airborne opera on the huge square around La Rotonde at the bottom of the Cours from 10.00pm until midnight.

Note that major traffic diversions will be in place during the run-up to this event.

1 June-18 September At the Fondation Vasarely in Aix en Provence, pictured below, a new exhibition, Vasarely, de l’œuvre peint à l’œuvre architecturé, assembles the artist's work in a wide range of media throughout his life to trace the evolution of his vision.

The Fondation Vasarely Aix en Provence7 June For what seems like forever, the building site of the dramatic MuCEM has dominated the entrance to the Old Port. It now finally opens its doors to the public and admission is free on 7-9 June.

The MuCEM's first two temporary shows are Le Noir et le Bleu, un Rêve Méditérranean (The Black and the Blue, a Mediterranean Dream), which looks at artists' visions of the future across countries and centuries and the curiously named Le Bazar du Genre (The Gender Bazaar), which investigates traditional concepts of gender and sexuality in different Mediterranean cultures. Both run until January 2014.

Items from the MuCEM's permanent collection of artefacts from Mediterranean countries will also be on display on a rotating basis.

TransHumance 2013 logo9 June One of the flagship events of the Capital of Culture programme and perhaps the most bizarre, TransHumance is a mix of popular tradition, theatre and experimental happening.

Inspired by the annual movement of animals in Provence between their summer and winter pastures, two convoys of thousands of cattle, sheep, goats and horses and their herders - originating from Italy and the Camargue - have been travelling through towns and villages in the region since 17 May.

On 9 June between 10am and 1pm, at the climax of TransHumance, the entire procession will thunder through the streets of Marseille, taking in Saint Charles Station, la Canebière, the Old Port and the Corniche JF Kennedy along the southern beaches.

Click here for the itinerary (scroll down the page to see the map) and details of public transport on that day. Needless to say, large parts of the city will be closed to cars.

13 June-13 October Le Grand Atelier du Midi is a huge and ambitious exhibition in two venues in Marseille and Aix en Provence. The title comes from a quote by Vincent van Gogh, who dreamed of a community of artists working together in the light and colour of the South when he briefly shared a house in Arles with Paul Gauguin.

Paul Signac Women at the WellWhile other shows in the region throughout 2013 are touching on the same theme, this is the big one, with nearly 200 works by major artists including Renoir, van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Cézanne, Dufy, Matisse, Picasso, Dali and many more.

They were created mainly between 1880 and 1960, though there is the odd later piece too. Pictured: Women at the Well by Paul Signac (1892), Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The works are on loan from major museums around the world (the Musée d'Orsay, in particular, will have quite a few gaps on its walls this summer) and the main signage is in English and Spanish as well as French.

The aim is to explore how the South, mainly the South of France, but also Spain, Italy and North Africa, inspired these artists to develop Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and other revolutionary languages of modern art.

The show at the newly reopened Musée des Beaux Arts at the Palais Longchamp in Marseille is themed around colour and the central figure of Vincent van Gogh, whose intense visions inspired the Expressionist, Pointillist and Fauvist movements, among others. Meanwhile, over at the Musée Granet in Aix en Provence, Cézanne's exploration of form is shown to lead to Cubism and Surrealism.

A smaller ancilliary show at the Musée Ziem in Martigues looks at works by Raoul Dufy painted at locations on the Blue Coast between Martigues and L'Estaque.

15 June-28 September Designed by the Italian architect Stefano Boeri, the futuristic and spectacular Villa Méditerranée (formerly - and more prosaically - known as the CeReM) hosts a show called 2031 en Méditerranée, nos futurs! (2031 in the Mediterranean, Our Futures!), which explores how we want the region to look in 20 years' time.

Also opening on 15 June is a permanent exhibition, Plus Loin que l'Horizon (Further than the Horizon), about movements of trade and tourism around the Mediterranean. Read our full guide to the Villa Méditerranée

Three Sailing Ships by Joseph Garibaldi29 June-6 October The Musée Regards de Provence is the new home of the Fondation Regards de Provence, an organisation which stages excellent shows celebrating provençal art from all eras.

Its second show, Cassis, port de la peinture au tournant de la modernité (Cassis, Port of Art on the Cusp of Modernity), explores modernist art in the town of Cassis, which will also stage its own sister-exhibition at its Musée d'Arts and Traditions Populaires.

Pictured: Three Sailing Ships on the quai des Baux at Cassis by Joseph Garibaldi.

Concurrently the Musée Regards de Provence has an exhibition dedicated to the provençal sculptor Bernar Venet, who also has a giant installation on show in the gardens of the Palais du Pharo. The Venet show continues until 13 Oct.

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Wallfor Cassis29 June "Wallfor" (sic) is a spectacular annual light show in Cassis during which images are projected onto the great cliff overlooking the town.

This year it stars the National Geographic photographer REZA, renowned for his probing images of conflict zones worldwide.

The slide show takes place at 10.30pm and is preceded at 9.30pm by a concert of baroque string pieces, including extracts from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, by five soloists from the Paris Opera. After the show, at 11.30pm, the French electronic / world music band Orange Blossom will give a concert on the beach.

29 June-29 September Aubagne hosts a pioneering "travelling museum", the Centre Pompidou Mobile. Around 15 major works from the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre in Paris are on display in a structure inspired by circus tents.

The show, entitled Cercles et Carrés (Circles and Squares), invites viewers to discover geometric shapes in 20th and 21st century art by painters including Duchamp, Kandinsky and Vasarely.

Ongoing Events

Until 9 June One of the flagship events of the Capital of Culture programme and perhaps the most bizarre, TransHumance is a mix of popular tradition, theatre and experimental happening.

Inspired by the annual movement of animals in Provence between their summer and winter pastures, three convoys of cattle, sheep and horses and their herders - originating from Italy, Morocco and the Camargue - will all converge in the Arles area, in what the organisers describe as a "regional mosaic" which will be photographed from above.

After meeting there, the great caravan will move onwards to Marseille, where thousands of riders and livestock will process through the city streets on 9 June. The general public can take part in this event.

Stop press: Morocco has since pulled out of the TransHumance. It seems the country wanted to promote its tourism and artefacts along the route, a campaign at odds with the organisers' concept of making it a purely theatrical event. Pity.

Martigues Miroir aux OiseauxUntil 9 June Martigues, with its Venetian mini-canal, pictured, and views over the Berre Lake, will be taken over by the Ilotopie theatre company for a spectacle, Anapos, Cité Lacustre (Anapos, Lakeside City).

Incorporating these waterside spaces, the show combines performance art, music and pyrotechnics to examine our view of water and to erect an imaginary city on the canals.

Until 9 June La Friche La Belle de Mai, the arts complex in a northern district of Marseille, is taken over by contemporary art, modern music, street art and sports for This Is [Not] Music, a celebration of alternative urban culture.

Until 1 September L'Ombre de l'Antique (The Shadow of Antiquity) explores the connections between the sculptor Auguste Rodin and classical Greek art.

Rodin never actually went to Greece, but collected some 2,500 original works or replicas from classical antiquity, and was profoundly influenced by them. Pictured: The Thinker by Rodin.

The exhibition gathers over 250 pieces by Greek sculptors and by Rodin himself in order to highlight these links and will travel on to the Musée Rodin in Paris in November. Website for the Musée Départementale Arles Antique.

Until 26 September Les Baux de Provence is hosting a slightly unusual spin on MP2013's ubiquitous theme of painters in the Mediterranean. Instead of a show exploring their fascination with the landscapes, its exhibition, Les Capitales Méditerranéennes "de Signac à Buffet", looks at how painters have portrayed southern cities from Toulon to Arles. At the Musée Yves Brayer.

Until 29 September The Digue du Large, a 7 km / 4.5 mile breakwater between Marseille's Old Port and L'Estaque, has long been inaccessible. Now it's open to the public again, allowing you to walk "over" the sea for the first time since 2001 and offering fresh views of the city from a surprising perspective.

As a bonus, the Franco-Algerian sculptor Kader Attia has created an installation, Les Terrasses (The Terraces), all along the breakwater: a series of bright white cubes and geometric shapes which you can climb on for yet more viewing points.

The Digue du Large is open at weekends and accessed by a free boat shuttle from the J4 Esplanade, near the MuCEM. Note that boats may be cancelled on days of high winds.

Until 30 September The Musée de la Légion étrangère (Museum of the Foreign Legion) in Aubagne hosts La Légion dans la peau (The Legion Under Their Skin), an intriguing-sounding display of photographs of legionnaires revealing their tattoos.

Until 13 October The conceptual artist Bernar Venet, who was born in Château Arnoux in Haute Provence, was invited to install a very large-scale work in the Jardin du Pharo, a park overlooking the Old Port of Marseille and surrounding the Palais du Pharo, itself recently the subject of renovation. Venet's piece, called Désordre (Disorder) consists of a huge interlocking cluster of his trademark monumental arches.

Until 13 October Aubagne, a centre of terracotta in its own right, is hosting a major show celebrating Pablo Picasso's Mediterranean-themed ceramics.

After the Second World War until the end of his life, the artist experimented with this medium, employing themes with a Southern flavour: ancient myths, the sun, bullfighting, doves and olive trees and, as always, women.

Some 150 pieces are featured, many of them from private collections, principally the Picasso estate, and have never seen before on public display. Chapelle des Pénitents Noirs, Aubagne.

Until 15 OctoberAll around the spectacular landscapes of the Camargue, Arles and the Rhône delta, Les Grands Chemins d'Envies Rhônements are a series of contemporary art installations and hiking trails with - as the punning title of the event hints - an environmental theme.

Until 20 October At Marseille's Museum of Contemporary Art, or [MAC], Le Pont (The Bridge) is an exhibition of work by artists from the Mediterranean region.

Walk with a Cloud by Francoise CoutantUntil 31 October An unusual concept is at the centre of a major show at the Musée Réattu in Arles, Nuage, or Cloud. The exhibition showcases exactly that: clouds in Eastern and Western art, both classic and contemporary.

It features Chinese pottery pillows in the shape of clouds, over 150 works by René Magritte, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer, Cornelia Parker, and more. Pictured: Promenoir à nuage (Walk with a Cloud) by Françoise Coutant, 2003. Website for the Musée Réattu, Arles

Until 5 January 2014 A new version of the hugely popular son et lumière show at the Quarries of Lights (formerly known as the Cathedral of Images), pictured, links into the overall Mediterranean theme of Marseille-Provence 2013 European Capital of Culture.

Called Monet, Renoir... Chagall. Voyages en Méditerranée (Voyages to the Mediterranean), it explores how the luminous colours of the Mediterranean, from the Spanish border to the Italian Riviera, have attracted painters throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

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

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