VENUE

The 11th European Conference on Epilepsy and Society will take place in the World Trade Center Marseille Provence, located at the heart of Marseille. The WTC is 5 minutes from the main railway station and 20 minutes from Marseille-Provence airport, while it is only a short walk to the historic Old Port.

MARSEILLE

Marseille, 2,600 years of history!

Marseille, the second largest city in France, is the capital of Provence and France's largest commercial port. The city was founded in 600 BC by Greek sailors as a trading port, and the port dominated the activities of the city in the centuries since then. All of Marseille's port activities now take place along the coast at the New Port; the Vieux Port (Old Port) has recently been redeveloped and contains restaurants, shops, bars and hotels and is a thriving tourist attraction.

Marseille is a city that is proud of its differences from the rest of France. The city is a unique cosmopolitan melting pot of Greek, Italian, Corsican, Armenian, Russian, Spanish and African - to mention but a few! It is a regional centre for culture and entertainment, with its opera house, museums, art galleries, theatres, la Friche arts centre, the Alcazar municipal library and much more.

Marseille also enjoys its own gastronomy - try aioli, tapenade, bouillabaisse, panisse, navette or bourride.

Marseille is twinned with 12 cities world-wide: Abidjan, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Dakar, Genoa, Haifa, Hamburg, Kobe, Marrakech, Odessa, Piraeus and Shanghai.

To the east of Marseille are the Calanques, a rugged coastal area interspersed with small fjords, where 27,000 year-old prehistoric wall paintings were recently discovered in a cave. Within the city, "must-sees" include the Vieux Port, the Palais du Pharo, the Phare de Sainte Marie, the Abbey of Saint-Victor, the Musée Cantini, the Museum of Old Marseille and the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. The city is building its future to become the unrivalled capital of southern Europe.