Marseille has been celebrating 80 years since Operation Dragoon, the Allied liberation of Provence from the Nazis in the summer of 1944. A road junction in Marseille has been guarded ever since by the shell of a destroyed American tank called Jeanne d’Arc. It is now a memorial. You can follow trails from the landing sites along the coast at Toulon and Saint-Raphaël to visit monuments and cemeteries.

Some of the townscape scars inflicted on Marseille by the fighting were permanent – the astonishing transporter bridge that straddled high above the entrance to the picturesque Vieux-Port like a steel daddy-long-legs was the most obvious casualty. The Germans destroyed it and most of the historic dock buildings to prevent the Allies using them.