Memoires de l'EauThe March line-up for MP2013 European Capital of Culture includes a prestigious new Easter festival of classical music, a water ballet, a rapper's tribute to Albert Camus and a long-distance footpath that reveals an unexpected side of Provence.

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

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).

1 March-16 June 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: it has recently spotlighted Félix Ziem, Joseph Garibaldi, Roger Blachon and René Seyssaud, among others, at its previous venue.

Converted from a former station sanitaire, the Musée Regards de Provence is right on the seafront by the Cathedral and the future MuCEM and the first exhibition there displays a wide variety of work from the Fondation's collection.

5-26 March Mars en Baroque does what it says on the tin: a month of beautiful baroque music concerts at various venues all across Marseille.

6 March The choreographer Jean-Charles Gil, the founder of the Ballet d'Europe, has created Mémoires de l'eau (Memories of Water) to explore the contrast between water as an element and the waters of the Mediterranean as a force bringing together the cultures around it.

The piece additionally meditates on the Roman treasures, including a bust of Caesar, which were discovered in the Rhône river in 2007. Pictured top left, it incorporates a break-dancing group from Tangier alongside the 12 dancers from Ballet d'Europe. At the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix.

8 March A brand-new version of the hugely popular son et lumière show at the Quarries of Lights (formerly known as the Cathedral of Images) 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. Until 5 January 2014.

8-10 March In homage to Pierre Bidon, the 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 come to Arles to create brand-new numbers dedicated to Bidon. Venue: a big top, tbc.

12-16 March A mighty controversy has erupted over the role of the Algerian-born, Nobel Prize-winning writer Albert Camus (The Stranger; The Plague) in the European Capital of Culture programme.

Much too complex to go into in detail here, the long-running row hinges essentially on France's continuing malaise with the legacy of the Algerian War, which played such a central part in Camus's life and work.

Albert CamusA planned major exhibition and tribute have been cancelled but Camus, pictured, will still have a (reduced) presence.

At this event, Abd Al Malik, a French rapper of Congolese origin, will pay homage to the writer and demonstrate the modernity of his writing. Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix

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13-29 March One Thousand and One Nights, the legendary collection of Scheherazade's stories, is recreated for the stage using a mix of music, theatre and dance by Macha Mareïeff. Théâtre de la Criée, Marseille.

Desordre Bernard Venet Marseille 201315 March-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.

Facing towards the sea, Venet's piece, called Désordre (Disorder) consists of 12 four metre / thirteen foot high interlocking steel clusters of his trademark monumental arches and is intended to evoke Marseille's maritime history.

The New York-based artist explains that he was attracted by the contrast between the classical symmetry of the Palais du Pharo and the "chaotic" asymmetry of his own installation. More of Venet's work from the early 1960s will also be on show at the Musée Regards de Provence in Marseille in June.

21-23 March Watt! is an international residency programme linking artists from different countries with symbolic ties to rap music, including New York, Marseille and newly independent locations in the Arab world where rappers become the spokesmen and -women of freedom.

Five original creations blending hip-hop, rock and electronic music will be performed at the annual Babel Med music festival at the Dock des Suds and various other venues in Marseille and Aix.

Aix TGV station on the Grande Randonnee 201322 March (inauguration). The Grande Randonnée 2013 (GR2013) is a newly created 360 km (224 mile) hiking trail with a difference: it will take ramblers through both spectacular rural landscapes and through industrialised urban areas on a huge double loop through Southern Provence. Click here to read our full guide to the Grande Randonnée GR2013 long-distance footpath.

22 March-26 May In the Joliette district, near Marseille's port area, the Fonds Régional de l'Art Contemporain Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur, more snappily known as the FRAC PACA, is a new museum designed by Kengo Kuma and hosts contemporary art collections and an exhibition space.

Its inaugural show is called La Fabrique des possibles (The Possibility Factory), features art that questions scientific conventions and spotlights the work of Richard Baquié, among others. Read our full guide to the FRAC PACA

26 March-7 April. Fans of the long-established Festival d'Aix will want to make a diary date for another top-flight celebration of classical music in the city: a brand-new Festival de Pâques (Easter Festival), which offers some 20 concerts in ten days.

Pianist Daiil TrifonovThe inaugural festival will feature artists such as Semyon Bychkov with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Valery Gergiev and his orchestra from the Mariinsky in Saint-Petersburg, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, chamber music ensembles, the prodigious young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov (pictured), Radu Lupu, Hélène Grimaud and Leif Ove Andsnes.

Each year a new piece will be commissioned from a composer. In 2013, Jörg Widmann will perform in the presence of Henri Dutilleux to whom the festival will be paying homage.

A Passion will be programmed every year; Bach's St John Passion will start the tradition in 2013. Concerts, rehearsals, master classes at the Conservatoire d'Aix, a resident violin-maker (Pierre Barthel), a conference (Alfred Brendel) and other educational concerts will punctuate this fortnight of music. Website for the Aix en Provence Easter Festival.

28 March-5 May VitaNONNova, a series of large multidisciplinary installations at the Ateliers SNCF, Arles, will combine film, opera, literature and live performances to investigate the theme of urban ghettos, influenced by Bobby Seal, Fred Hampton and the Afro-American movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

The creators, Jean-Michel Bruyère and the avant-garde LFKs collective, made a splash last summer at the Festival d'Aix with an opera inspired by the Black Panther leader Huey P Newton.

Ongoing Events

Until 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).

Until 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 MP 2013, 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 Radiant City shot with some of today's radiant citizens.

Until 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.

Until 7 April A new gallery space, the Tour Panorama at the Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille's northern suburbs, hosts Ici, Ailleurs (Here, Elsewhere) a show of contemporary art including work by Gilles Barbier, Mounir Fatmi, Ange Leccia, Sarkis and Djamel Tatah.

Until 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.

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

Until 18 May Mediterranées (Mediterraneans) takes you on a virtual odyssey around eleven ports on the Mediterranean from Troy to Marseille.

It is held at the J1 Hangar, 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.

Death in the Afternoon by Roberto MattaUntil 19 May Matta, Surrealism and History are the themes of a show at the Musée Cantini, Marseille, devoted to the Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta (1911-2002), who started out as a pure surrealist but became politicised by the cataclysmic events of the late 20th century. Pictured: Death in the Afternoon (1965).

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

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