The Tarot de Marseille

The Tarot de Marseille is the classic pattern that defined tarot for centuries — and the tradition our own house-style deck is drawn from.

A standardised woodcut pattern

As tarot spread from Italy into France, printers using woodcut and stencil techniques settled on a consistent set of images and titles. The city of Marseille was a major card-making centre in the 17th and 18th centuries, and its name came to describe the whole pattern.

How it looks

• Bold outlines and flat colour — a limited palette of red, blue, yellow and flesh tones on off-white stock, dictated by the printing method.
• Illustrated trumps, "pip" minors — the Major Arcana are pictorial, while the numbered minor cards show arrangements of the suit symbols rather than scenes.
• French titles and old numerals — Le Soleil, La Lune, and forms like XVIIII for 19 — details we keep in our deck.

Why it still matters

The Marseille remains a living tradition, prized for reading the minors through number and suit rather than fixed scenes. It also shaped everything that followed — including the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.