Marseille ( mar-SAY, French: [maʁsɛj] (listen), locally [maχˈsɛjə] (listen); also spelled in English as Marseilles; Occitan: Marselha [maʀˈsejɔ, -ˈsijɔ]) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the historical province of Provence, it is located on the coast of the Gulf of Lion, part of the Mediterranean Sea, near the mouth of the Rhône river. Its inhabitants are called Marseillais.

Marseille is the second most populated city in France, with 870,731 inhabitants in 2019 (Jan. census) over a municipal territory of 241 km² (93 sq mi). Together with its suburbs and exurbs, the Marseille metropolitan area, which extends over 3,972 km² (1,534 sq mi), had a population of 1,873,270 at the Jan. 2019 census, the third most populated in France after those of Paris and Lyon. The cities of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, and 90 suburban municipalities have formed since 2016 the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, an indirectly elected metropolitan authority now in charge of wider metropolitan issues, with a population of 1,898,561 at the Jan. 2019 census.