La Treille
Encyclopedia
Quarter (country subdivision)
A quarter is a section of an urban settlement.Its borders can be administratively chosen , and it may have its own administrative structure...
on the outskirts of Marseilles' 11th arrondissement
Municipal arrondissements of France
The municipal arrondissement is a subdivision of the commune, used in the three largest cities: Paris, Lyon and Marseille. It functions as an even lower administrative division, with its own mayor...
, in the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône
Bouches-du-Rhône
Bouches-du-Rhône is a department in the south of France named after the mouth of the Rhône River. It is the most populous department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Its INSEE and postal code is 13.-History of the department:...
, France. At the quartier's centre is the ancient village of La Treille, with some 900 inhabitants. La Treille is famous as the place where writer Marcel Pagnol
Marcel Pagnol
Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française.-Biography:...
spent his summer holidays during his childhood—at the Bastide Neuve—and he is buried in the cemetery there. This is also where La Pascaline—the house where Pagnol started to write Souvenirs d'enfance
Souvenirs d'enfance
Souvenirs d'enfance is a series of autobiographical novels by French filmmaker and académicien, Marcel Pagnol . Souvenirs d'enfance comprises four volumes covering the years from his birth in 1895 to about 1910, which were spent in Marseille, with family summer holidays in La Treille, about ten...
(La Gloire de mon père and Le Château de ma mère
Le Château de ma mère
My Mother's Castle is a 1957 autobiographical novel by Marcel Pagnol, the second in the four-volume series Souvenirs d'enfance and the sequel to My Father's Glory...
)—is located. Nearby is the massif of Garlaban
Garlaban
Garlaban is a hill which looks out to Aubagne. The summit is 715 metres high although its highest point is the butte des pinsots .It can be seen from most of the southern part of Bouches-du-Rhône, from Marseille to the valley of Huveaune, through to the motorway in Toulon and the one in...
, which also features prominently in Pagnol's books about his childhood. Pagnol's early films used the village as a backdrop and its inhabitants as actors and it has only slightly changed since then. At the gates of the church, in the main square, visitors and film buffs are attracted to the fountain, which was Manon's fountain in Pagnol's 1953 film version of Manon des Sources
Manon des Sources (film)
Manon des Sources is a critically acclaimed and commercially successful 1986 French language film. Based upon the 1966 two-part novel by Marcel Pagnol, itself an adaptation of an earlier film of the same title by Pagnol, it is the sequel to Jean de Florette.-Plot:Following the events of Jean de...
.