49 Fun Facts About Corsica

Which island ranks just behind Corsica as the fifth largest in the Mediterranean?

Crete. It trails Corsica by only a few hundred square kilometres, yet it is home to far more people: over 600,000 against Corsica's 350,000 or so.

Which city is the regional capital of Corsica?

Ajaccio. The Genoese moved the town to its present site in 1492, building a citadel to the south of the older settlement.

Which future French leader was born in Corsica's capital in 1769?

Napoleon. Sent to school in France at nine, he long thought of himself as a foreigner there and spent his cadet years as an outspoken Corsican nationalist.

Which republic lost Corsica to Genoa after its fleet was crushed at the Battle of Meloria in 1284?

Pisa. The papacy had put its bishop in charge of the island in 1077, and in the two centuries that followed churches in the Pisan style went up across Corsica.

Which island lies immediately south of Corsica, across the Strait of Bonifacio?

Sardinia. Rome governed the two islands as a single province, yet today the strait between them is an international border between France and Italy.

What is the highest peak on Corsica?

Monte Cinto. At just over 2,700 metres it crowns the single mountain chain that fills two-thirds of the island, which is why Corsica is nicknamed a 'mountain in the sea'.

Who led the independent Corsican Republic proclaimed in 1755?

Pasquale Paoli. He wrote the republic's constitution, founded a university and a printing press, and even built the island a small navy.

Corsican rebels gave the German adventurer Theodor von Neuhoff which title in 1736?

King. He landed with a shipload of muskets and offered them on condition that the rebels crowned him, but Theodore I's reign was over within months.

To which French monarch did Genoa cede Corsica in 1768?

Louis XV. Once Genoa had signed away its rights, his troops invaded in overwhelming numbers and ended fourteen years of Corsican self-rule the following spring.

Which famous Roman philosopher was exiled to Corsica?

Seneca. Emperor Claudius banished him in AD 41 on a charge of adultery with the emperor's niece, and he spent eight years on the island before being recalled to tutor Nero.

Corsica is divided into two departements, Haute-Corse and which other?

Corse-du-Sud. The 1976 split revived a division from the French Revolution, when the island was cut into two departements called Golo and Liamone until 1811.

Until 1970, Corsica was grouped in one administrative region with which part of mainland France?

Provence. A 1960 decree created a region called Provence-Côte d'Azur-Corse, and in January 1970 the island was detached to become a region of its own.

What image appears on the flag of Corsica?

A Moor's head. The island's short-lived republic adopted it in 1755, and its leader is said to have had the blindfold raised to the forehead as a sign of liberation.

What name is given to the dense, fragrant scrub that covers much of Corsica?

Maquis. Outlaws and fugitives long hid in it, so the rural guerrilla bands of the French Resistance in the Second World War borrowed its name.

Which armed nationalist group announced itself with a night of bombings across Corsica in May 1976?

FLNC. The National Liberation Front of Corsica went on bombing targets on the island and the mainland for decades, until its largest faction laid down its arms in 2014.

Claude Érignac, shot dead by Corsican nationalists in 1998, held which office on the island?

Prefect. He was the French state's representative on the island, and when his convicted killer, Yvan Colonna, was fatally beaten in prison in 2022, riots broke out across Corsica.

Which Corsican cheese, similar to ricotta, is the key ingredient in the cake fiadone?

Brocciu. Cheesemakers heat the whey left over from ewe's or goat's milk cheese with a little fresh milk, then skim off the soft curds that float to the top.

Which tree did the Genoese plant across Corsica on a large scale, transforming the islanders' diet?

Chestnut. Ground into flour, the nuts became the staple of Corsica's mountain villages, cooked into bread and a thick polenta called pulenta castagnina.

The Genoese built a chain of coastal towers around Corsica to defend against whom?

Barbary pirates. Their raids from North Africa emptied whole stretches of coast, and an alarm from a tower sent villagers and their livestock fleeing inland.

What is the name of the famously tough long-distance hiking trail that runs the length of Corsica?

GR20. It follows the island's mountain spine from Calenzana to Conca, and its stretches of hands-on scrambling have earned it a name as one of Europe's hardest long-distance paths.

By what nickname is Corsica widely known in France?

The Isle of Beauty. A second nickname, the Scented Isle, comes from its flowering scrub, whose perfume carries far out to sea.

Which Corsican nature reserve, reachable only by boat, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Scandola. The peninsula is the remains of a volcano that collapsed into the sea, and its sheer red cliffs give ospreys and cormorants nesting ledges no one can reach.

Which horned wild animal roams the mountains of Corsica's regional nature park?

Mouflon. It looks every inch a wild sheep, yet it descends from primitive domestic flocks that escaped from the island's Neolithic farmers.

Which large scavenging bird is a famous resident of Corsica's mountains?

Bearded vulture. Also called the lammergeier, it lives mostly on bones, carrying the big ones high into the air and dropping them onto rocks to get at the marrow.

Which philosopher predicted in 1762 that the little island of Corsica would one day 'astonish Europe'?

Rousseau. The line comes from The Social Contract, and two years later he set to work on a constitution for the island, a project he never finished.

Which language stayed official in Corsica until 1859, almost a century after France took over the island?

Italian. It had been the written language of Genoese rule, and for decades after the French arrived official acts were still drawn up in it and most books printed in it.

Cargèse in Corsica was settled by descendants of 17th-century refugees who fled Ottoman rule in which country?

Greece. The families came from the Mani peninsula, and the village still has two churches facing each other across a valley, one Greek-rite and one Latin.

Which region, about 90 km away across the water, is Corsica's nearest mainland neighbour?

Tuscany. Medieval settlers crossed from there in such numbers that the Corsican language is still a close cousin of Tuscan.

Which Scottish writer published a 1768 account of his travels in Corsica?

James Boswell. He spent six weeks on the island interviewing the leader of its independence struggle, more than twenty years before his famous Life of Samuel Johnson appeared.

Which foreign power was invited in 1794 to help drive the French out of Corsica?

Britain. Admiral Hood's fleet took the island that year, and during the siege of Calvi a captain named Horatio Nelson lost the sight of his right eye.

Paratroopers from Algeria seized Corsica without a shot in May 1958, a mutiny that helped return whom to power?

Charles de Gaulle. With the island taken and a second drop on Paris being prepared, parliament turned to him after twelve years out of office, and the Paris operation was called off.

Which comic-book hero visits Corsica in a 1973 album that pokes fun at the islanders' pride, siestas and feuds?

Asterix. In Asterix in Corsica he escorts an exiled chieftain home, and a local cheese smells so foul that it blows up the pirates' ship.

How did Corsicans vote in the 2003 referendum on abolishing their two departements?

A narrow majority voted no. Just under 51% rejected the plan that interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy had campaigned for, yet the two councils were merged into one island authority anyway in 2018.

Which Corsican tradition did UNESCO list in 2009 as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding?

Polyphonic singing. In the paghjella three men's voices enter in a fixed order, and UNESCO stepped in because young islanders were emigrating before they could learn it.

What track gauge does Corsica's mountain railway use?

Metre. The line climbs through very difficult mountain terrain and crosses the Vecchio river on a viaduct 94 m high, its metal span built by Gustave Eiffel's company.

Which sea lies off the east coast of Corsica?

Tyrrhenian Sea. Its name comes from an ancient word for the Etruscans, who held the mainland shore opposite and for a time a foothold on Corsica too.

Which explorer does the Corsican town of Calvi claim, by local legend, as a native son?

Christopher Columbus. Calvi was a Genoese stronghold in his day and signs at every road into town make the claim, but historians have found nothing to support it.

The Tour de Corse, held on the island since 1956, is what kind of motorsport event?

Rally. Its asphalt stages wind over mountain roads so twisty that the event is nicknamed the Rally of Ten Thousand Turns.

Which Corsican football club reached the final of the UEFA Cup in 1978?

SC Bastia. The islanders knocked out Sporting Lisbon, Newcastle United and Torino on the way, then held PSV Eindhoven to 0-0 at home before losing the return leg 3-0.

Which French film star has a Corsican father and spent part of her childhood on the island?

Laetitia Casta. Her modelling career began at 15, after she won a village pageant while on holiday in Corsica.

Corsican-born Henri Padovani was the first guitarist of which London trio?

The Police. Padovani played on the band's first single, 'Fall Out', the only Police record he appears on, before Andy Summers took his place within months.

Which custom lay behind thousands of killings in 19th-century Corsica?

The vendetta. Under Genoese rule the courts were so corrupt that families took justice into their own hands, and the code of deadly revenge outlived Genoa by a century.

Which Genoese admiral was sent to win back Corsica after a Franco-Ottoman fleet seized it in 1553?

Andrea Doria. He was 86 when Genoa summoned him, and he spent two years campaigning on the island before going home to retire for good.

The town of Bonifacio sits on cliffs of what rock, unusual on an island that is otherwise mostly granite?

Limestone. The sea has undercut the chalk-white cliffs, so the old town's houses, built on the very lip, seem to hang out over the water.

From which rival power did Rome seize Corsica in the third century BC?

Carthage. Rome won its first foothold during the First Punic War, yet it needed about a century of campaigns to subdue the island and never had much grip on the mountain interior.

Which Corsican port grew up around the fortress where Genoa's governors had their seat?

Bastia. The Genoese made it their chief stronghold in the north, and trade with the nearby mainland turned it into the island's busiest port, with over two million passengers a year in the early 2010s.

Calvi in Corsica has been home since 1967 to a parachute regiment of which famous French force?

The Foreign Legion. Its 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment had been based in Algeria and moved to a camp outside Calvi five years after that country became independent.

The prehistoric site of Filitosa in Corsica is known for standing stones carved with what?

Faces and weapons. Raised in the Bronze Age, the statue-menhirs went unrecognised until the landowner reported them in 1946.

Corsica's traditional anthem, Dio vi salvi Regina, is a hymn addressed to whom?

The Virgin Mary. A Jesuit priest wrote it around 1675 as a version of the Salve Regina, and tradition says Corsican rebels took it as their anthem when they broke with Genoa in 1735.