Don’t mess with Corsica

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Calvi, Corsica, August 2003. I almost ran right by ‘Little Joe’ as I made my way across the port of Calvi on an early morning jog. But the sight of an enormous blue eye staring up at me from the dock stopped me dead in my tracks. The giant eye belonged to a swordfish’s severed gray head, and Little Joe was busy slicing thick filet slabs from its body before weighing and dispensing them to a small crowd of customers who had gathered around him. I lingered to watch the lively scene before continuing on a run that took me along a winding cliff road with plunging views of the Mediterranean Sea.  Back at my hotel I found out that ‘Petit Joe Rico’ was famous for his catch not just in Calvi, but all over Corsica.   Called Kalliste, meaning beauty, by the ancient Greeks, the island of Corsica lies in the Mediterranean Sea between France and Italy. Balzac described Corsica as “a French island basking in the Italian sun.” But the island has a character all its own. French for only the last 250 years of its 4,000-year-existence, Corsica has been the conquered by the Romans, Goths, Vandals, and Moors and spent five centuries under Genovese rule. For a brief interlude in the mid 18th century Corsica was even an independent nation. This lingering spirit and a rebellious nature are at the heart of the Corsican character today. T-shirts sport the slogan “Often conquered, never subjugated” and figure the bandana-wearing head of the Muslim infidel (symbol of Corsica since the 16th century), next to the bandana-wearing head of Cuba’s Che Guevara.   The Corsican landscape, like its people, is isolated, rugged and proud. A mix of mer and montagnes, Corsica is an island of dramatic contrasts. Saint-Exupéry once said “When the sun made love to the sea Corsica was born.” Corsica’s 600 miles of coastline (no part of the island is more than 25 miles from the sea) include dramatic cliffs, intimate inlets and dream beaches. Its mountainous interior, without which the sea would not be as blue or as troublingly abrupt, features a myriad of natural parks and nature reserves, glacier lakes, deep forests and lost valleys. Corsica is at once rugged and voluptuous, austere and perfumed.   I arrived in Corsica by ferry from the city of Nice in the south of France. On previous trips to Nice I had watched the ferries to Corsica steal out of the port toward their mystical destination with a twinge of longing. This time I was on board. Three hours later I watched Corsica and the town of Calvi approach:  first the mountains, then the Genovese citadel and old city on its promontory rock. Calvi lies in a spectacular natural bay where mountain peaks soar above boat masts in a setting so beautiful it takes your breath away. The ferry docks right at the foot of the citadel, where you cross the gangplank into another world. Calvi’s bustling marina–filled with fishing boats and yachts–lies under the watchful eye of its austere fortress, today home to the legendary French Foreign Legion. Calvi is also the birthplace of one particularly famous Genovese sailor, Christopher Columbus.   Although Calvi’s long, sandy beach is depicted in romantic early-century travel posters, we decided to explore more isolated swimming options just outside of town, where endless secluded coves and the cover of large rocks make skinny dipping, even in the tourist month of August, irresistible.   With its clear waters and legendary shipwrecks, Corsica is a mecca for divers. Some great wreck dives lie off the Bay of Calvi, where a whole aquatic universe is asleep, nourished by stories of failed military campaigns and overturned cargos with forgotten treasures. In the latter part of World War II Corsica served as a base for allied bombing runs over the south of Italy. Consequently, just a few kilometers from Corsica’s coast are numerous sunken boats and planes, their tranquility disturbed only by curious divers. One such witness of the past is a B-17 bomber attacked February 14, 1944 and lying just off Calvi’s citadel in 90 feet of water.   A few years ago, 71-year-old Corsican Jean Santonini was so moved by the sight of a similar plane sunk off his family beach near Calvi that he wrote down the tail number and contacted the American army archives. Santonini eventually found the pilot, Lieutenant Donohue, whose plane had sunk in the battle of Cassino on April 4th, 1944. Santonini got in touch with Donohue and invited him to Corsica.   “When we brought up the joy stick from the sea to give it to him, he was in tears,” recounts Santonini. Although Lieutenant Donohue has since died, Santonini was named a life-long pilot of honor in the US Air Force.   Between Ajaccio, south of Calvi on Corsica’s west coast, and Bonifacio, at Corsica’s southernmost tip, lies the mountainside town of Sartenes, described by 19th century novelist Prosper Merimée as ”the most Corsican of Corsican villages.” Fortified against barbarian attack by the Genovese in the 16th century, Sartene’s tall stone facades, bleached by the incessant sun, look down from their mountainside perch. A warren of narrow streets, staircases and noblemen’s houses greet you, and the village square teems with children until well after midnight. Despite its buttressing, Sartene was taken by Hassan Pacha, King of Algiers in the 1580s and four hundred of Sartene’s residents were enslaved.   A sense of honor is an important legacy of Corsica’s turbulent past and persists in the island’s character today. Although vendettas no longer exist, during the 17th century an estimated 900 Corsicans lost their lives each year as a result of them, and whole families were sometimes exterminated. In the 19th century Sartene was known for its vendettas between noble families. The conflict caused so many deaths that a general peace treaty was signed between the feuding families in 1834. Nevertheless, a traveler in Sartene a century later remarked that “the houses were shuttered and several armed men were posted around the city.”   You can contemplate Sartene’s tumultuous history from La Villa Piana’s poolside as you watch the late afternoon sun set the town’s stones afire. La Villa Piana is a charming auberge built around an old, stone shepherd’s house, with a view of Sartene spilling down the mountainside. An immaculate little inn of stone and tile, La Villa Piana has the outdoorsy, pampered feel of a western U.S. spa,…
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Comments

  • mark michaels
    2019-07-30 03:01:20
    mark michaels
    No vendetti anymore? You've been misinformed...

    REPLY