Corsica is the third-largest island in the Mediterranean, a mountainous mass rising from the sea off the French and Italian coasts that feels like neither country. It is administratively French — it has been since 1768, one year before Napoleon Bonaparte was born there — but its culture, language, and temperament are distinctly its own. The Corsican independence movement has never gone away: road signs in French are routinely defaced, and the island's prickly relationship with Paris is a constant undertone.
The interior is wild and largely uninhabited. Snow-capped peaks rise above 2,700 metres; forests of chestnut and Laricio pine cover the slopes; gorges cut through the granite. The GR20, a long-distance trail running the spine of the island from Calenzana in the north to Conca in the south, is considered one of the hardest and most beautiful mountain hikes in Europe — two weeks of demanding walking through scenery that is genuinely extreme. For less arduous hiking, the Mare a Mare and Mare e Monti routes cross the island from coast to coast with village stops and gîte accommodation.
The coasts are equally impressive: long sandy beaches in the south, dramatic red-cliffed coves around Porto and Scandola (a UNESCO Marine Nature Reserve), turquoise water throughout. Ajaccio, Napoleon's birthplace and the island capital, has good museums and a lively port. Cargèse, north of Ajaccio, adds a small but distinctive Greek-Corsican chapter with its facing Latin and Byzantine-rite churches. Bastia in the north is grittier and more authentically Corsican. Calvi is the most resort-like, with a Genoese citadel and a famous long beach. Corte, in the interior, is the spiritual capital of Corsican nationalism and the island's university town.
Getting there: ferries from Nice, Toulon, Marseille, Genoa, and Livorno; flights from most French cities and several European airports.
