Written by Elizabeth Mika
Founder and Maker, Bramble & Bear™ Soap Co.
How a remarkably simple soap from the Mediterranean became part of French history.
There is a soap in France whose history involves Mediterranean trade, olive oil, royal rules, Napoleon Bonaparte and enormous boiling cauldrons. And, at first glance, it doesn't look particularly extraordinary.
Savon de Marseille—literally, Marseille soap—is the traditional soap associated with Marseille, the great Mediterranean port city in southern France. Usually sold as substantial blocks or cubes in shades of green, olive, cream or beige, it is known less for decoration than for its vegetable oils, traditional way of making soap and distinctive stamped markings.
Soapmaking has been connected with Marseille for centuries, with records of soapmakers in the region dating back to the late fourteenth century. But by the seventeenth century, something unusual had happened: soap had become important enough to attract the attention of the French Crown.
How Marseille Became a City of Soap
Marseille was unusually well positioned for the trade. Its Mediterranean port connected the city with merchants, oils and other raw materials moving throughout the region, while finished soap could leave Marseille for customers elsewhere in France and beyond.
By 1660, Marseille already had seven soap factories producing nearly 20,000 tonnes of soap a year. Soapmaking was no longer simply a local craft. It was becoming a serious industry—and increasingly part of Marseille's identity.
As the reputation of Marseille soap grew, another problem appeared: when people begin to trust the name of a product, how do you make sure the product still deserves that trust?
France was dealing with that question more than three hundred years ago.
Then the King Got Involved
This was the France of Louis XIV, the Sun King. By then, Marseille soap had become important enough that the French government wanted to protect its quality and reputation.
Under Louis XIV, his minister Colbert pushed for stricter rules around soapmaking. In 1688, new regulations were put in place for soap made in Provence.
One requirement is particularly interesting to a soapmaker: the soap was to be made using pure olive oils, and animal fats were excluded.
The City of Marseille describes the rule as an obligation to use “des huiles d'olive pures”—pure olive oils.
For something we now think of as an ordinary bar beside the sink, that is quite remarkable. The government was paying attention to what went into the soap kettle.
But Marseille soap had become valuable. Its reputation mattered, and poor-quality imitations could damage that reputation. More than three hundred years ago, France was already dealing with a problem that still exists today:
When people trust the name of a product, how do you make sure the product still deserves that trust?
From Olive Oil to an Industry
Traditional Marseille soap was not a quickly made product. Its manufacturing process developed around enormous cauldrons and repeated stages of boiling, washing and purification—a method quite different from the small-batch cold-process soapmaking familiar to many artisan soapmakers today.
The traditional method became associated with the grande chaudière, literally the “great cauldron.” Oils and alkali were cooked in large vessels, and the soap went through several stages of cooking, washing and purification before it was dried, cut and stamped.
Marseille soap was not simply a bath soap. For generations, French households used it as a versatile everyday soap—for washing the family, laundering clothes and other household cleaning. That also helps explain the large traditional blocks: this was a working household soap, not just a small personal bar.
The stamp was more than decoration. It identified the maker, and in an industry whose reputation increasingly depended on where the soap came from and how it was made, that identity mattered.
Then Came Napoleon
The connection between French power and Marseille soap did not end with Louis XIV. More than a century later, Napoleon Bonaparte entered the story.
On December 22, 1812, a decree created a distinctive mark for Marseille olive-oil soap. The mark included the words huile d'olive—olive oil—along with the maker's name and the city of Marseille.
Think about that for a moment. A bar of soap had now attracted the attention of a king's government—and, generations later, Napoleon's.
It tells us something about how differently soap should be understood in its historical setting. Soap was a household necessity, but it was also chemistry, maritime trade, manufacturing and commerce. In Marseille, it had become an industry important enough to be regulated, marked and protected.
And What About the Famous “72%”?
If you have ever seen a traditional cube of Marseille soap, you may have noticed one particularly prominent marking:
72% D'HUILES — 72% oils.
It is easy to look at that number and assume it means 72% olive oil. But that isn't necessarily what it means.
The Marseille formula changed over time. Although the seventeenth-century rules emphasized pure olive oils, other vegetable oils later became part of Marseille soapmaking. The famous 72% marking is tied to the traditional oil content of the soap, not necessarily to olive oil alone.
72% does not automatically mean 72% olive oil.
It is a small detail, but an interesting one—especially because olive oil and the number 72 have become so closely associated with Savon de Marseille.
Marseille Soap at Its Peak
By the early 1900s, Marseille had become one of Europe's great soapmaking centers. In 1908, the city had 81 soapworks producing around 140,000 tonnes of soap. By 1913, production had climbed to about 180,000 tonnes.
That is a lot of soap.
For generations, these soapworks had been part of Marseille's working life. Huge cauldrons boiled, blocks of soap dried in great rooms, and finished soap left the city for homes far beyond Provence.
Then the twentieth century changed things. Wars made oils and other raw materials harder to obtain, while industrial detergents, washing machines and large-scale manufacturing changed the way people cleaned their homes.
One by one, many of Marseille's traditional soapworks disappeared. What had once been a huge local industry became much smaller.
And yet it did not vanish.
Traditional soapmakers in and around Marseille kept the old craft alive, continuing to cook soap in great cauldrons, cut it into substantial blocks and stamp the maker's name into the finished soap.
That survival may be one of the most interesting parts of the story. Savon de Marseille was born in a world of sailing ships, olive groves, kings and enormous soap kettles—and somehow, more than three centuries later, you can still buy it.
An Old Soap Becomes Modern Again
Modern artisan soap can be beautifully decorative. Savon de Marseille comes from another tradition, one built mainly around what went into the kettle, how the soap was made and where the tradition came from.
Perhaps that is why something so old has become surprisingly modern again.
Traditional soapmaking, simple ingredients and old methods are being looked at with fresh eyes. What once might have seemed old-fashioned can now feel intentional, authentic and remarkably current.
Marseille soap fits naturally into that revival. Its simplicity is no longer old-fashioned. It is part of its appeal.
We often assume that making something special means adding more, but Marseille soap tells a different story.
The oil matters. The method matters. And sometimes, patience matters most.
Behind that simple block lies a history of Mediterranean trade, generations of soapmakers, royal rules, Napoleon, industrialization—and the survival of a soapmaking tradition that has found relevance again centuries after it began.
That is quite a story for something we leave beside the sink.
Sources
City of Marseille, Un cube mythique, 100 % naturel et 100 % marseillais; Marseille Tourism Office, Le savon de Marseille; French National Assembly, parliamentary records concerning Savon de Marseille and the decree of December 22, 1812.
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