A Genoese legacy
France’s Island of Beauty lives up to its name,
Corsica, the Mediterranean’s fourthlargest island and a French region, was ruled by the Genoese from 1284 until 1768. Their legacy litters the 1000km coastline.
On the northeast coast, I walk Aldilonda, a promenade built between the 15th and 17th centuries, which skirts rock cliff and Bastia Citadel’s stone walls. Stairs lead up into the old town within; shabby, windowshuttered, three and four-storey buildings line cobbled streets.
I emerge from an alley into a large square, cafes along one side. A drawbridge opposite leads into the apricot-coloured Genoese Governor’s Palace.
Built in 1448, it’s now the Museum of Bastia, covering seven centuries of the town’s history.
Villages dot green hills along Corsica’s eastern coast where camping sites are numerous and vineyards and olive trees grow. On a hill, 15th century Fort de Matra overlooks flat land.
Beachside restaurants cluster above white sandy beaches; further south is the brown, barren Monte Renoso massif.
On the coast just south of Bonifacio, I look towards its citadel. Camouflaged, but for terracotta roofs, it’s perched on a white limestone cliff finger 70m above the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea. Sardinia is a green smudge 12km away.
The citadel was founded around 828 by Count Bonifacio of Tuscany. The Genoese massacred the citadel’s 12th century inhabitants and enticed Ligurian families there promising monetary benefits. The dialect which evolved is still spoken.
I find street signs displaying it, and French, within the citadel’s walls. Here stands Corsica’s only Gothic church, the late 13th century Church of Saint Dominique. Its numerous pillars and lofty, arched ceilings surprise given its simple stone exterior.
On a cobbled street I watch a suitcase being lowered on rope from a window. Easier than navigating scaringly, steep, narrow stairs added in the 19th century.
Before this, the multi-storeyed, medieval homes were accessible only by ladder into upper windows, raised when the citadel was invaded.
Above shaded, narrowing alleys brick buttresses cross; some move water around town. I duck into the plain-looking Church of Saint John the Baptist to find a pale-blue ceiling.
The spire of Bonifacio’s oldest church, 12th century Eglise Santa Maria Maggiore, towers above all. Its loggia, with wooden overhead beams, looks barn-like. Inside, quiet from tourist crowds, pastel frescoes decorate above the marble altar.
In rue Doria, the family crest of the noble Genoese Doria family remains on a wall; stone doorsteps are grooved from centuries of footsteps.
A plaque in Rue des Deux Empereurs marks where Corsican-born Napoléon Bonaparte stayed in 1793.
Turquoise sea stuns, contrasting with white limestone, as I descend, hard-hat donned, the King of Aragon’s Stairway. Legend says the 187 steep steps were dug into the cliff overnight in 1420 by the king’s invading troops. They lead to a narrow, dead-end path below overhanging rock just above the sea. Ascending them is heart-pumpingly slow.
From a train window I view a landscape of farms and vineyards as I head southwest from Bastia to L’Île-Rousse.
Winding along green rocky hillsides the landscape changes; rugged brown, bare peaks and later, jagged grey spires.
The seaside town’s promenade runs above white sand dotted with beach umbrellas to a causeway leading to barren, reddish-brown Pietra Island.
Near its tip, the circular Genoese watchtower almost blends in, the lighthouse startling white.
In town, three, pedestrianised, cobbled streets contain restaurants and touristy shops. Palm trees wave in Pascal Paoli Square, the pinkish-beige Church of the Immaculate Conception overlooking it.
A 35-minute, seat-less train ride further south is Calvi, where the yellowish Calvi Citadel sits high on the tip of a rocky peninsula. Above its towering stone wall a white flag portrays a Moor’s head wearing a bandana, Corsica’s symbol since the 13th century.
According to a plaque, Christopher Columbus was born here around 1436.
Here there is a quieter citadel than Bonifacio’s, fortified in the 13th century, its cobbled thoroughfares more open.
I spend an hour peering through arrow slits, climbing stairs, walking walls overlooking modern Calvi, and get lost among shabby, three-storey ancient townhouses to emerge back in a square below the green-doored, patchy-yellow, 1500s-built Cathédrale St-Jean-Baptiste.
On a four-hour boat trip from Bastia I discover Corsica’s 40km northern peninsula, Cap Corse.
Villages’ faded buildings huddle along its coastline, spreading to the lower slopes of green hills beyond. They become scarcer northwards, where white beaches stretch.
Yacht masts punctuate the marina at Macinaggio, the peninsula’s largest town, near its tip.
Built in the 1500s to defend against invaders, cylindrical Genoese towers, 12-17m high, dot Corsica’s entire coast, with at least eight along Cap Corse’s eastern side. When enemy were spotted a fire was lit on the tower roof and, seen from other watchtowers, repeated along the coastline.
Torra di l’Osse has a parapet with regular gaps; stones or burning objects thrown from slits below them; other towers are flat-topped, some are ruins.
The most picturesque, Torra di Santa Maria, is surrounded by turquoise sea, a stone side almost obliterated by British cannonballs in 1794.
At the northern tip, once connected but now separated by around 20m of sea, lies ÎIe de la Giraglia.
The 600m-long island’s square tower was an important surveillance point. Genoa lies northwards, Livorno north-east and Provence northwest.
I take a tour from Bastia to the centraleast coast. From above, Porto appears to be a mass of red buildings surrounded by red rock fronting an azure sea.
The road climbs into hills to look down over Calanche de Piana’s pinkish-red granite formations, jutting, swirling, strange shapes formed by the elements and backdropped by the sea.
A boat trip leaves Porto’s sheltered harbour for Capo Rosso, passing the square Genoese watchtower perched on a 45m-high red outcrop. Silhouetted on Cap Rosso’s clifftop, 300m above the sea, Torra di Turghju blends into the red rock.
Among granite islands of pink, red and orange hues, we motor multi-hued blue water through sea-carved arches and view caves.
Atop another cliff, a rock balances between two red monoliths, known as the Castle of Calanche de Piana. Stunning.
Corsica, ‘The Island of Beauty’, is certainly that. I wished I had longer to explore its Genoese legacy.