is France's rough diamond. On the Mediterranean coast east of the Rhone delta, this feisty city has nothing of travel poster Provence or Riviera glitter. While other southern cities smile seductively, Marseilles looks the other way. Or so it seems.

By MARTIN O'BRIEN

rom the moment Greek adventurers set up the trading post of Massalia in 600 B.C., the city has been resolutely independent. Marseilles backed the wrong Roman in 49 B.C., siding with Pompey rather than Julius Caesar. It was sacked by Goths, Franks and Saracens and devastated by plagues.

It was never very long, however, before a new ship dropped anchor in the Old Port. Servicing the Crusades filled the city's coffers; the colonial era made it even richer; the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 secured its future as the gateway to Europe. Today, Marseilles is still the most important port on the Mediterranean, and the eighth largest in the world--a mercantile heavyweight with local industries that include chemicals, oil refining, metallurgy, shipbuilding and food processing.

Like any port, Marseilles has always been a tough town with its fair share of villainy. When law enforcement agents (remember Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle?) set out to crack the French Connection in the early '70s, France's second-largest city was exposed as a center for drug-trafficking, prostitution and racketeering. Marseilles has also suffered a succession of financial scandals and rigged elections, not to mention undue camaraderie between the forces of law and disorder. Corruption spread to football in 1993, when the home team, Olympic Marseilles, was banned from competition for a year for alleged match fixing, and the team's flamboyant owner, Bernard Tapie, was convicted of bribery, embezzlement and tax evasion.

Added to all this, Marseilles endures the racial tensions of a city with one of the highest levels of immigration in the country--and a flock of far-right extremists are ready to exploit that fact.

Against this background, under new Mayor Jean-Paul Gandin Marseilles is entering into a grandiose urban renewal plan called Euromediterranee. The first stage of the 20-year project, which has already converted the old docks warehouses into offices, also calls for the renovation of the La Joliette industrial port, the St. Charles rail station and the disintegrating neighborhood between them, all by 2001, to the tune of some $500 million.

The Old Port remains the city's magnetic center. Now essentially a pleasure-craft marina, it is best viewed from the hilltop terraces of Notre Dame de la Garde Church, a neo-Byzantine confection crowned by a 10-m Madonna, or from the gardens of the Palais du Pharo, built by Napoleon III for the Empress Eugenie, who declined to visit it. Along the quayside, La Samaritaine Cafe is a local favorite for a pre-lunch pastis or for morning coffee after the daily fish market.

Much of that catch winds up on restaurant tables. The ugliest specimens--local rock fish like the devilish rascasse--are reserved for Marseilles' signature dish, the rich, rust-colored fish stew called bouillabaisse. Sadly abused by unscrupulous restaurateurs, the classic recipe was close to extinction in 1981, when a group of restaurants drew up the Charte de le Bouillabaisse, promising to serve only the real (and expensive) thing. Of the 14 founding members, nine are in Marseilles, including the famed Le Miramar on the Quai du Port and Chez Fonfon in the Vallon des Auffes inlet.

There are few remnants of Marseilles' Greek and Roman heritage, beyond the aptly-named Jardin des Vestiges near the Old Port and the remains of a Roman galley and warehouse in Le Panier, the city's oldest district. Built above the Old Port, "the Basket" is a warren of stepped streets and narrow passageways whose souk-like markets are more North African than French.

Many of the city's oldest buildings house museums: Mediterranean Archaeology and African Arts are in the 17th century Hospice de la Vieille Charite; the Cantini Museum is a 17th century mansion filled with 20th century art; the just-renovated Grobet-Labadie Museum is a private 19th century home and collection; the Maison Diamantee is the Museum of Old Marseilles; and the new Faience Museum is in the 1862 Chateau Pastre.

In true Mediterranean style, Marseilles is a city of brisk, business-like mornings and long sultry afternoons, when it basks in what Flaubert called its "oriental indolence." This is the time to head for the man-made Prado beaches; to take a boat to the calanques, inlets that indent the white coastal cliffs for 20 km from Marseilles to Cassis; or to ride the ferry to the Frioul Islands and see where Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo languished in the Chateau d'If.

The indolence does not apply to sport, however. Soccer-mad Marseilles has redesigned its 60,000-seat Velodrome Stadium, and as far as football goes, the rough diamond will be highly polished for the World Cup.