Haute-Corse is the department comprising Cap Corse and Castagniccia, the island’s two most contrasting regions: Cap Corse, a peninsula of black schist and Genoese towers battered by the winds from the open sea, and Castagniccia, a land of chestnut trees that have nourished generations of Corsicans by providing them with flour, wood and fruit alike.
Bastia, the economic capital of Corsica, is an Italian-style town with its old port, tall pastel-coloured houses and Genoese citadel overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Corte, an inland citadel that served as the capital of Pascal Paoli’s Free Corsica from 1755 to 1769, is the symbol of Corsican identity and the seat of the University of Corsica. Aléria, formerly Alalia, founded by the Phocaeans in 565 BC and a crossroads of all Mediterranean civilisations for a millennium, is home to a leading archaeological museum.
The Genoese towers — Nonza on its schist outcrop, the Tower of l’Osse, the Tower of Santa Maria — dot the coastline and mountain passes of the department, bearing witness to the defensive system that Genoa maintained on the island for three centuries, before France purchased sovereignty over it to settle the debts of the Seven Years’ War.