CORSICA Vs SARDINIA
French cuisine, couture shops and military history? Or Roman ruins, romance and la dolce vita? Chris Leadbeater helps you choose
The old adage that good things come in small packages, while hardly untrue, does tend to ignore the idea that good things come in large format, too. Big can be beautiful – and it achieves a rare artistry in two of the biggest islands in the Mediterranean. Run an eye across the European map and you cannot miss them, dominating the western half of the continent’s defining sea. Corsica – France’s southern satellite – shimmering off the coast of Tuscany; Sardinia, Italy’s “other” vast outcrop, waiting a little further down.
They are big enough, these near-neighbours, that they could be independent powers in their own right. Indeed, at various points in their histories, they were. Even now, they have the scale and heft of nation states. Were it a country, Sardinia (the second largest island in the Med, eclipsed only by its compatriot Sicily) would be the planet’s 146th largest; only just smaller than both Rwanda and North Macedonia, bigger than each of Israel and Belize. Corsica, the Med’s fourth-biggest island, is only narrowly smaller than the third, Cyprus – which, you have probably observed, is an actual country.
They share more than their strange case of size over status. Arguably, each has more in common with the other than with the politicians in Rome and Paris who pull their strings remotely. Yes, there are cities, harbours and airports. But both islands are unashamedly wild in their geography – mountainous massifs swelling up from their stony hearts, the slopes slipping down to ragged coastlines of craggy bays, quiet towns and gorgeous beaches.
DH Lawrence conveyed this thought succinctly in his 1921 travelogue Sea and Sardinia, writing that “the land resembles no other place. Sardinia is something else. Enchanting spaces and distance to travel. Nothing finished, nothing definitive. It is like freedom itself.”
So why aren’t these islands better appreciated in the UK? Some 6.3 million British tourists went to Italy amid the prepandemic tranquillity of 2019, but only 357,000 of those travellers – 5.6 per cent – were headed for Sardinia. With Corsica, the figure is even lower. Around 17 million Britons travel to France every year. In 2017 – the last available set of statistics – only 37,800 ventured to the largest
French island this side of the South Pacific.
In part, this is an image issue; the islands’ untamed aesthetics sometimes leave them viewed as destinations only for the intrepid. But while options for active tours are myriad, both Corsica (visit-corsica.com) and Sardinia (sardegnaturismo. it) offer holidays beyond the purely adventurous. They are rich in history, food and culture. And more importantly, they deal in relaxation and summer comforts – as the following “mini guides” demonstrate.