Corsica Trivia
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49 free Corsica trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Corsica trivia quiz covers the whole of the 'mountain in the sea': the geography (Monte Cinto, the Strait of Bonifacio, the Scandola reserve and the GR20, the toughest long-distance trail in Europe), the long history under Pisa and Genoa, Pasquale Paoli's short-lived republic and its 1755 constitution, the sale to France in 1768 and the birth of Napoleon in Ajaccio a year later. It also asks about the things visitors actually notice: the Moor's head flag and why its bandana moved, the coastal towers built against Barbary pirates, chestnut flour and brocciu cheese, the two departements, the metre-gauge railway, the football clubs of Bastia and Ajaccio, the Tour de Corse rally, and the nationalist conflict that ran from 1976 to the truces of 2014 and 2016. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Corsica, its towns, mountains and history, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for travellers planning a trip, French geography revision, and pub quiz setters who want something beyond 'where was Napoleon born'.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which island ranks just behind Corsica as the fifth largest in the Mediterranean?
Crete
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.
Q 02Which city is the regional capital of Corsica?
Ajaccio
Ajaccio. The Genoese moved the town to its present site in 1492, building a citadel to the south of the older settlement.
Q 03Which future French leader was born in Corsica's capital in 1769?
Napoleon
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.
Q 04Which republic lost Corsica to Genoa after its fleet was crushed at the Battle of Meloria in 1284?
Pisa
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.
Q 05Which island lies immediately south of Corsica, across the Strait of Bonifacio?
Sardinia
Sardinia. Rome governed the two islands as a single province, yet today the strait between them is an international border between France and Italy.
Q 06What is the highest peak on Corsica?
Monte Cinto
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'.
Q 07Who led the independent Corsican Republic proclaimed in 1755?
Pasquale Paoli
Pasquale Paoli. He wrote the republic's constitution, founded a university and a printing press, and even built the island a small navy.
Q 08Corsican rebels gave the German adventurer Theodor von Neuhoff which title in 1736?
King
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.
Q 09To which French monarch did Genoa cede Corsica in 1768?
Louis XV
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.
Q 10Which famous Roman philosopher was exiled to Corsica?
Seneca
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.
Q 11Corsica is divided into two departements, Haute-Corse and which other?
Corse-du-Sud
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.
Q 12Until 1970, Corsica was grouped in one administrative region with which part of mainland France?
Provence
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.
Q 13What image appears on the flag of Corsica?
A Moor's head
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.
Q 21By what nickname is Corsica widely known in France?
The Isle of Beauty
The Isle of Beauty. A second nickname, the Scented Isle, comes from its flowering scrub, whose perfume carries far out to sea.
Q 22Which Corsican nature reserve, reachable only by boat, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
Scandola
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.
Q 23Which horned wild animal roams the mountains of Corsica's regional nature park?
Mouflon
Mouflon. It looks every inch a wild sheep, yet it descends from primitive domestic flocks that escaped from the island's Neolithic farmers.
Q 14What name is given to the dense, fragrant scrub that covers much of Corsica?
Maquis
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.
Q 15Which armed nationalist group announced itself with a night of bombings across Corsica in May 1976?
FLNC
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.
Q 16Claude Érignac, shot dead by Corsican nationalists in 1998, held which office on the island?
Prefect
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.
Q 17Which Corsican cheese, similar to ricotta, is the key ingredient in the cake fiadone?
Brocciu
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.
Q 18Which tree did the Genoese plant across Corsica on a large scale, transforming the islanders' diet?
Chestnut
Chestnut. Ground into flour, the nuts became the staple of Corsica's mountain villages, cooked into bread and a thick polenta called pulenta castagnina.
Q 19The Genoese built a chain of coastal towers around Corsica to defend against whom?
Barbary pirates
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.
Q 20What is the name of the famously tough long-distance hiking trail that runs the length of Corsica?
GR20
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.
Q 24Which large scavenging bird is a famous resident of Corsica's mountains?
Bearded vulture
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.
Q 25Which philosopher predicted in 1762 that the little island of Corsica would one day 'astonish Europe'?
Rousseau
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.
Q 26Which language stayed official in Corsica until 1859, almost a century after France took over the island?
Italian
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.
Q 27Cargèse in Corsica was settled by descendants of 17th-century refugees who fled Ottoman rule in which country?
Greece
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.
Q 28Which region, about 90 km away across the water, is Corsica's nearest mainland neighbour?
Tuscany
Tuscany. Medieval settlers crossed from there in such numbers that the Corsican language is still a close cousin of Tuscan.
Q 29Which Scottish writer published a 1768 account of his travels in Corsica?
James Boswell
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.
Q 30Which foreign power was invited in 1794 to help drive the French out of Corsica?
Britain
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.