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Marseille is a city with a metropolitan population of 1.668 million,1 798 thousand of which live in the city proper,2 situated just east of the delta of the Rhône River and on a gulf that is part of the Mediterranean Sea, within the Bouches-du-Rhône (Mouths of the Rhône) Department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (Provence-Alps-Azure Coast) Region of France. The tallest modern building is the 33 story CMA CGM, an office tower (2010). The Notre-Dame de la Garde church (1864) sits prominently atop a hill, and the Unité d'Habitation, designed by Le Corbusier, is a 19 story residential tower with amenities (1952).3
The city hosts an important container port.4
1. Figure for 2012 in world-gazetteer.com, accessed 2/6/2013.
2. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_France, accessed 2/5/2015.
3. Most of the information about buildings is from emporis.com, accessed 6/29/2015. The date for the church comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_la_Garde, accessed 6/29/2015.
4. The Times Atlas of the Oceans (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983), "commodity loading ports" map.