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Origin and history

The Hotel de Pesciolini, also known as the Hotel de Mazargues, is a Marseille private hotel built between 1672 and 1674 in the 1st arrondissement, at the corner of the rue Nationale and the rue d'Aix. Sponsored by Amant de Pesciolini, son of the Tuscan banker Hercule Pesciolini, he embodies the social ascent of a family of Italian origin established in the Marseille trade. Its south façade, facing the Belsunce courtyard, has a iron-plated balcony supported by two monumental atlantes, framing a beef eye and surmounting carved sphinges. These elements are inspired by Pierre Puget's atlantes for Toulon City Hall (1657), although their paternity remains anonymous.

The construction was entrusted to the entrepreneurs César Portal and Alexandre Casteau on a plot purchased in 1672 from Barthélemy de Cousinéry, former consul of Marseille. The initial estimate includes colossus (atlantean) instead of consoles, a rare artistic audacity for the time. As early as 1692, the hotel was rented to Jean-Paul de Foresta and then transferred by inheritance to Marie-Anne de Pesciolini, wife of a councillor in Parliament. Sold in 1708, the property passed into the hands of merchant families (Gantel-Guitton, Reynard, Martin), surviving revolutionary upheavals despite the death sentence of its owner Nicolas Jean Joachim de Gantel-Guitton in 1793.

The hotel was partially protected as early as 1929 (a monumental gate), then fully listed as historical monuments in 2023. Its architecture reflects the influence of the commercial elites of Marseilles of the 17th century, mixing residential functions (noble floors) and commercial ones (stores on the ground floor). The Atlanteans, inspired by the warships – Puget then worked at Toulon's arsenal – symbolize the economic power of its sponsors. Today, it bears witness to the golden age of the Marseille trade and its unknown Baroque heritage.

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