Before a crowd thronging the waterfront and hilltops of this ancient port city of Marseille, the Olympic flame arrived in France on Wednesday, beginning a 79-day relay across the country and its territories that will culminate in Paris with the start of the Olympic Games on July 26.
In an elaborate ceremony attended by President Emmanuel Macron and a crowd estimated at more than 150,000 people, all eyes were on the Belem, a historic three-masted ship that bore the flame, and was greeted by more than 1,000 boats in a forest of masts filling Marseille’s harbor.
The Belem, which spent much of the day cruising just beyond the city’s old port, left Greece on April 27, carrying the flame lit in Ancient Olympia eleven days before that.