Bouches-du-Rhône department (13)
Bouches-du-Rhône department (13): Marseille, Aix, Arles
Bouches-du-Rhône (13) is the most populous department in the South of France: 2.09 million people, only 119 communes, four arrondissements. It also runs on an unusual piece of administrative machinery: the Marseille préfecture and three sous-préfectures divide the work not by territory but by type of residence permit. Below: how to make sense of that, which cities to consider, and where Russian-speaking life happens here.
Bouches-du-Rhône is the department of the Rhône delta: Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, the Camargue, the calanques. More than two million people live here — more than in Hérault and Gard combined — and yet they are spread across only 119 communes: the communes are large and settlement is heavily concentrated. For anyone relocating, the department comes with one quirk that exists nowhere else in the South, and that is the right place to start.
Bouches-du-Rhône in numbers
- Region: Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA).
- Préfecture: Marseille.
- Population: 2,087,658 (INSEE, 2023).
- Area: 5,087 km², 119 communes in all.
- Arrondissements: four — Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Istres.
Préfecture and sous-préfectures: divided by permit type, not by territory
In most departments the logic is simple: you go to the office for the place you live. Bouches-du-Rhône works differently, and it catches people out on a regular basis. The four offices specialise by category of residence permit:
- Préfecture des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseille — 66B rue Saint-Sébastien, 13006 Marseille (metro Estrangin or Castellane), tel. 04 84 35 40 45 (14:00–16:00). Handles ’talents’ (passeport talent), healthcare professionals, students, beneficiaries of protection and the employment categories.
- Sous-préfecture of Aix-en-Provence — 455 avenue Pierre Brossolette, 13617 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 1, tel. 04 42 86 57 69, open to the public on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 8:30 to 12:15. Handles family members of French citizens — spouses, parents, children.
- Sous-préfecture of Arles — 16 rue de la Bastille, 13637 Arles Cedex, tel. 04 90 52 55 11, open to the public on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 to 12:15. Handles seasonal workers.
- Sous-préfecture of Istres — handles EU citizens and the ‘visiteur’ (visitor) category.
Renewals, duplicates and changes to a permit that has already been issued are a different matter: those go through the office covering your commune of residence, so here the ordinary territorial logic by arrondissement applies. The application itself, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is filed online through the ANEF portal, and the finished titre de séjour (residence permit) is handed over strictly on a convocation. The official breakdown, with a map of the arrondissements, is on bouches-du-rhone.gouv.fr.
OFII — Marseille territorial directorate. 61 boulevard Rabatau, 13008 Marseille, tel. 04 91 32 53 60, marseille@ofii.fr. VLS-TS visa validation, the medical examination, the CIR integration contract. This directorate covers six departments — 04, 05, 13, 20 (Corsica), 83 and 84 — so the queue for an appointment is longer here than in Montpellier or Nice.
Step-by-step walkthroughs of the procedures are in the Moving to the South of France section.
Cities in the department we have guides for
Marseille — 886,040 residents, France’s second city and the country’s largest port, with two metro lines and three tram lines.
Aix-en-Provence — 149,695 residents, a university town and noticeably more expensive than Marseille; no tram, only Aixenbus buses.
Arles — 51,811 residents, the gateway to the Camargue and Van Gogh’s city — and, at the same time, the largest commune by area in metropolitan France, at almost 759 km².
Martigues — 48,298 residents, the “Venice of Provence” built out of three burgs that merged in 1581; the only town on our list that belongs to the Istres arrondissement, which is where renewal of the ten-year card is handled.
Aubagne — 47,529 residents, Marcel Pagnol’s birthplace and the home of the Foreign Legion; the whole town transport network has been free since 2009.
Istres — 44,292 residents, the seat of its own arrondissement: an air base, the Étang de l’Olivier, and every administration you need within walking distance.
Salon-de-Provence — 44,194 residents, the town of Nostradamus and of the Patrouille de France flying school, halfway between Aix and Avignon.
La Ciotat — 38,477 residents, a superyacht refit yard, the birthplace of pétanque and the oldest working cinema in the world.
The full list is in the Cities of the South of France section.
How transport works
By air. Marseille Provence (MRS) at Marignane, roughly 27 km from Marseille and 24 km from Aix, is the largest airport in the PACA region after Nice; a shuttle bus and a train run from it to Saint-Charles station.
By train. TGV services from Marseille Saint-Charles reach Paris in 3 hours 10 minutes to 3 hours 30 minutes. From Paris there is also a direct TGV INOUI to Aix-en-Provence TGV — about 2 hours 56 minutes, some twelve services a day; one detail is worth knowing in advance, though: that station sits roughly 18 km from the centre of Aix, not in the town itself. Arles to Paris takes around 3 hours 33 minutes.
Around town. Marseille runs the RTM network: two metro lines, three tram lines and buses, with a single ticket at €1.70 by card or €2.00 from the driver. Aix has buses only (Aixenbus): a single ticket is €1.20 and stays valid for an hour, a carnet of 10 trips costs €9. Arles has the Envia network (€1.20 from the driver, €1.10 by card) plus the free HOPLA shuttle in the centre.
What sets Bouches-du-Rhône apart from the other southern departments
Scale. Two million residents and the country’s second city add up to a different order of infrastructure: the only metro in the South, France’s largest port, an enormous job market, and the widest spread of rental prices to be found inside a single city.
The calanques. The Calanques National Park, between Marseille and Cassis, is the only park in the Mediterranean that takes in mainland, islands and a stretch of open sea all at once, and Europe’s only periurban national park: it begins right on the boundary of France’s second-largest city.
The Camargue and Arles. The Rhône delta is protected wetland: flamingos, rice fields and white horses. The Roman and Romanesque monuments of Arles have been on the UNESCO list since 1981.
The mistral. The dry northerly wind is appreciably stronger here than in Hérault. It sweeps the clouds away — Marseille gathers around 2,800 hours of sunshine a year, Arles up to 2,900–3,000 — but in winter it takes a noticeable bite out of the temperature.
Two different rhythms half an hour apart. Marseille is loud, portside and multi-ethnic; Aix is bourgeois, compact and full of students. About 30 km separates the two, and choosing between them is the first real question for everyone moving to this department.
Where Russian-speaking life happens in Bouches-du-Rhône
Orthodox parishes. Marseille has two of them: the parish of Saint Hermogène (100 avenue Clot Bey, 13008 Marseille; Sunday liturgy at 10:30, hours at 10:10; Archdiocese of the Western European parishes of the Russian tradition) and the parish of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God (1 boulevard Mont Rose, 13008 Marseille; liturgy at 10:00, confession from 9:00; Korsun Diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate). For Russian speakers in Hérault and Gard, these are the nearest churches with a service every single Sunday. The details are in our Orthodox churches directory.
Groceries. The Armenian-Russian deli Anahit (9–11 boulevard de la Liberté, 13001, next to the station, open daily 9:00–20:00; branch at 165 boulevard de Pont de Vivaux, 13010) is now the only specialist shop left inside Marseille itself. The city’s second one, Diana on boulevard Louis Salvator, closed in 2026: as of our August 2026 check it shows up as closed on maps and in reviews, so if that address is still sitting in an old chat message or guidebook of yours, it no longer leads anywhere. The nearest alternatives are 30 km away in Aix-en-Provence: Sheriff Alimentation (15 cours Saint-Louis, 13100), an épicerie trading since 2014 with products from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey — its hours changed under new ownership in 2025, so check them before setting off — and NOY Market (1 boulevard Victor Coq, 13090) by the bus station, with Armenian, Russian, Greek and Eastern goods (dried fish, cheeses, spices and a wide choice of drinks), open Monday to Saturday 9:45–20:00. Details are in the shops directory.
Doctors and translators. The Russe language filter on Doctolib returns more results for Marseille than for any other city in the South; sworn translators (traducteurs assermentés) are listed among the experts of the Cour d’Appel d’Aix-en-Provence. See Doctors and translators.
Our people in department 13
The ‘Vibe South of France’ chat has members living in Marseille, Aix and Arles — the community covers the whole South rather than splitting itself up by city. That is a deliberate choice: instead of a dozen quiet city groups, there is one chat of around 400 people, where a question like ‘which sous-préfecture handles my category’ is answered by people who have been through it themselves, not by a website with generic wording.
Marseille is also a practical point on the map for us: people come here from Montpellier and Nîmes for the Sunday liturgy, and fly out of here when Montpellier has no suitable route. The big community gatherings more often happen in Montpellier and along the Hérault coast — but even those are only an hour and a half from Marseille by TGV.
See also: