En un regard
Le château en bref
The Oppidum de la Cloche, in Les Pennes-Mirabeau, is a protohistoric fortified settlement that overlooked the ancient road linking Marseille and Arles. Residual pottery indicates a first occupation in the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE, but no structures from this period survive. The visible remains date from a reconstruction at the end of the 2nd century BC: a fortification of square towers preceded by an outer wall, houses and stepped streets following the slope, and a cistern of roughly 60,000 litres coated with lime mortar. The site was abandoned around 50 BC, at the time of Caesar's siege of Marseille. Excavated since the 1970s by Louis Chabot, who explored nearly half of it, it has been listed as a Monument historique since 2004 and belongs to the commune.