France · Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur · Marseille
Saint-Jean du Désert, Marseille — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Saint-Jean-du-Désert is a quarter in the 12th arrondissement of Marseille, once known for its faience, in a valley making fired clay since prehistory.
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Where to stay in Saint-Jean du Désert
How the choice of base plays out on the ground.
A valley runs north to south through it. Saint-Jean-du-Désert sits at the centre of a broad one that separates Saint-Barnabé and Saint-Pierre on the west from Saint-Julien and la Pomme on the east. Clay is what the ground is.
Largely clayey and full of springs, it has been used for terracotta production from the earliest times, which is what the faience works were the last stage of. Marseille proper lies southwest.
About Saint-Jean du Désert
What are the main landmarks in Saint-Jean du Désert?
One chapel gives the quarter its name. Benoît Monier, seigneur d'Aiglun and owner of a tile and clay works at Sarturan, gave his pine wood in 1638 so a chapel could be built on the hill beside the valley in honour of Saint John the Baptist, the voice crying through the desert. Permission took thirty years.
His son Antoine Monier notified the gift in 1664, the vicar general authorised the building in 1667, and the chapel was finished in 1668. It grew afterwards. A bell tower was added in 1708 and side chapels were blessed in 1736, and the alderman Jean-Pierre de Moustiés, who served beside bishop Belsunce during the plague of 1720, is buried there with a plaque on the façade recording it.
What is the history of Saint-Jean du Désert?
Fired clay is the oldest activity here. Archaeologists have found a ditched network of the Chassey period in this valley along with other traces of occupation in late antiquity, and the clay and the springs are why. Greeks planted vines.
They cultivated the ground among other things, and the quarter later formed part of a large property the Gallo-Romans called Sarturan. Priests farmed it in the 10th century. Building priests attached to the Major directed cultivation in the first quarter of that century, the tenement was granted to the canons of the Major in 1176, and the chapter still took the tithe in 1216.
Labour ran out at the end of the Middle Ages. The abbot of Saint-Victor recorded that no arms could be found to work land the city badly needed, so repopulation charters were issued, taken up first by peasants and then by wealthy Marseillais who established properties. A chapel followed in 1668.
Benoît Monier's gift of 1638 led to it, and the quarter has carried the name Saint-Jean-du-Désert since.
Where is Saint-Jean du Désert?
Saint-Jean-du-Désert lies in the 12th arrondissement of Marseille at the centre of a north to south valley between Saint-Barnabé and Saint-Pierre to the west and Saint-Julien and la Pomme to the east.
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Updated September 2026