Bastia: Corsica's Genoese port

Built by the Genoese as a fortified outpost, Bastia still preserves an old harbor today that evokes Liguria more than mainland France.

The old Genoese harbor is comfortably explored on foot in a morning.

The Old Harbor, the Genoese heart of the city, brings together tall, narrow houses in pastel colors around a basin still used by fishing boats and pleasure craft.

Above the harbor, the Citadel, built by the Genoese in the fourteenth century, encloses the Palace of the Governors and the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta.

Walking down to the center you traverse Place Saint-Nicolas, a broad tree-lined square overlooking the sea, the heart of modern city life and departure point for buses to the rest of the island.

Toward evening, the alleys of the Old Town district, among Baroque churches and Genoese palaces, come alive with restaurants and open-air bars late into the night.

The Genoese influence on Bastia remains visible not only in the architecture but also in many expressions of the Corsican dialect, still today closer to Ligurian than to continental French.

The Citadel was the seat of Genoese power over the island for centuries, before Corsica came under French control in 1768, just one year before Napoleon's birth in Ajaccio.