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The Bonne Brise beach is little known to tourists in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône). (© Dominique Milherou)
The Marseille city has multiple beaches, each more beautiful than the next. Some are more frequented like the creeks of Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) today victims of overcrowding. Others, on the other hand, remain little known and hide a story.
This is the case of the beach of “la Bonne Brise”. Also known as “The beach at Dédé”, name of a legendary pizzeria « At Dédé »Demolished in 2013. Or “The glassware beach” which reminds us of the history of this coastal area.
A natural sand beach
“This is one of the rare beaches with natural sand” confides Dominique milherou, a southerner from the West who has launched since 2013 to discover “the thousands of places of the past, present and future of Marseille”.
If today the Marseillais still and always benefit from this environment preserved from mass tourism, there was in the 1800s, 50 meters away, a factory.
“In 1823 the Pons-Grimblot glassworks was built. It was a factory specializing in window glass linked to the sea by a tunnel passing under the Chemin de la Madrague »explains the specialist.
Charles-Auguste Verminck, a peanut importer and oil manufacturer needed bottles to produce a very large quantity for his business.
This is why “he acquired this factory with 400 employees who mobilized night and day” says Dominique Milherou before continuing “this factory has known a lot of strikes and demonstrations. It closed in 1935 for financial reasons and that same year an arson attack occurred. We think that it is the workers who are the authors to take revenge ”.
A place managed by the locals
An event that brought poverty to this district today surrounded by “very beautiful houses”. Little known, it is mostly occupied by locals who know the area well. And for good reason.
The beach of the Good Breeze is not accessible by a simple path. “You have to enter a small hallway located under a building with a large staircase. The locals give as little information as possible, ”explains Dominique Milherou.
It is one of the rare beaches to have small cabins. Open 24 hours a day, the Bonne Brise beach is unsupervised. Anxious to keep this place a secret, the locals take care of this little corner of paradise. Dominique Milherou even says that an “old lady comes by herself every day to clean her”.
This is to say how fiercely it is preserved.
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