CORSICA TOURIST INFORMATION

Tourist information about the individual Corsican departments of Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud can be found through every property details page along with tourist information about the local towns, tourist attractions and information about events happening in Corsica.

CORSICA TOURISM

Corsican culture is the product of centuries of customs maintained by the island's soul, and is richly expressed in its language, music and crafts. The village fair, a showcase for the Corsican way of life with its winemaking tradition goes back to antiquity and its gastronomy full of local flavours, is just one way of discovering and learning to love Corsica.

Corsica was occupied by small tribes starting in the 7th millennium BC. The fist known human is the "Lady of Bonifacio" (ca. 6570 BC).

Man has occupied the entire island during the Neolithic Era, developing agriculture and animal husbandry and organising villages. There were certainly regular contacts with the nearest Mediterranean coasts. A brilliant civilisation rose in the 3rd millennium. They knew how to cast copper, sculpted hundreds of menhirs (standing stones), some of which are veritable statues and built huge stone constructions (castelli, torri).

Corsican history as we know it, began with the arrival of the Greeks from Phocea, in 565 BC. They set up at Aleria (Alalia), planning to make it their principal centre in the West. In 540 they defeated a coalition of their neighbours, the Etruscans and Carthaginians, but their losses were such that they had to abandon part of their colony. Aleria remained a major hub with a mix of outside populations and "barbarian" Corsicans.

The strategic location of the island and the usefulness of its heavily woodedforests for shipbuilding made it a strategic stake in the Punic Wars. The Romans defeated the last resistance in 111. Colonies were then set up at Mariana and Aleria. While the new arrivals were moving into Corsica, Corsicans could be found emigrating throughout the Empire.

After a series of invasions, Corsica was defended against the Moors by the Frankish kings and their vassals in Tuscany. The feudal lords of the island took part in the conflict between republics of Genoa and Pisa. After a period of Pisan domination, remembered as a period of peace and of artistic and cultural development, Genoa took over. The 14th century was a period of unrest, with the Giovannali heresy, then an anti-feudal revolution in 1358 under Sambucucciu d'Alandu. Under the threat of a return of the feudal lords, the Commune of Corsica "gave itself" under contract to Genoa, a major Mediterranean power at the time. The island was divided between the feudal South and the more democratic North. It took centuries for Genoa to impose its laws over the Cinarchesi Lords who dreamed of setting up their own Corsican State with outside support. They were not removed until the beginning of the 16th century, after waves of destruction that emptied part of the country of its inhabitants.

During this period, Genoa, which had controlled Bonifacio since 1195, built the current present-day towns, at first populated with its own colonists, and set up a development programme. There would appear to have been a certain degree of prosperity, but the ongoing dreams of freedom lent a Corsican patriotic slant to the French occupation of 1553, with the help of Condottiere Sampieru Corsu. When Genoa took the island back, Sampieru took up the struggle until his glorious death made him a symbol of the Corsican nation.

Incapable of taking the island back, Genoa ceded Corisca to France on 15 May 1768. The French monarchy had long been trying to control Corsica for strategic reasons. The Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769 shattered the organised resistance. Paoli went into exile in England, while the guerrilla movement continued until 1774.