Like many islands, Corsica is moody.

Here's the sunrise yesterday from the window of our apartment:


We're the second set of windows down:


And here (and above) are the dramatic skies of this morning's first light:


Ajaccio is gorgeously situated, so ringed with mountains that it feels as though you're by a lake:



The Genoese? Yes, indeed. As Dorothy Carrington says, in her very readable 1971 publication, Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica, "Corsica has paid the penalty of being too much coveted..." There were settlements of Greeks, Carthaginians, and possibly Etruscans. Then the Romans conquered the island, heralding seven centuries of domination. Then there were invasions of Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Lombards. There was Byzantine rule for a bit. There were invasions of Saracens from Spain and North Africa. And it was assigned by the Pope to Pisa in 1077. Then came Genoese rule, a brief French interlude, and the return to Genoa. Rebellion followed in the 1700s, led by Pasquale Paoli: "Elected head of state in 1755 he gave the country a constitution in keeping with the most enlightened ideas of the age... Genoa sold her sovereignty over Corsica to France; French troops poured into the island; in 1769 the patriots were defeated and Paoli fled to England." During the revolution, Paoli returned from exile, declared Corsica independent, and appealed to the British for protection. An Anglo-Corsican kingdom was proclaimed. But when the tides of war in the Mediterranean started to go against the British, they evacuated Corsica, and Napoleon sent in troops, which were unopposed.

Phew... Exhausting...


We walked west along the coast yesterday. Having done zero research, it was all a nice surprise. First, the so-called Chapel of the Greeks, used by a Greek community from the Mani peninsula, who, towards the end of the 17th century, took refuge first in Genoa and then in Ajaccio.


Next, the Sanguinaires Cemetery, which starts slowly, with just the odd shrine by the roadside, and then intensifies until it's an entire village:






If you go the other way, north along the big bay, rather than west, you come across some very fine buildings:




And you also bump into the railway station, which we will be using in earnest tomorrow:



And if you go west, not along the coast this time, but rather along the grand Cours Grandval, you come to what is often known as the Foreigners' Quarter.

Carrington (1910-2002) gives us lots of insight into this area. She first visited Corsica in 1948. (At that point, she was married to surrealist painter Francis Rose, a friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.) She made several more trips, and then, with her marriage starting to run aground, she settled on the island (in Ajaccio) in 1954.

Her initial impressions: "Ajaccio was one of those southern resorts where retired army men and faintly eccentric single ladies congregated to spend comfortable annuities... I came upon the Anglican church of the vanished British community, one of those to be found dotted about the Mediterranean, stranded amid palm trees and oleander and murmuring imperturbably of yew trees and harvest festivals and apple-faced children's choirs. A Miss Thomasina Campbell was responsible for building it, a fearless Scottish spinster who discovered Corsica back in the 1860s and also built herself the largest of the neigbouring villas... Undismayed by the savage aspect of Corsica, by reports of bandits and bad inns and malaria, she journeyed all over the island in hired carriage and stage-coach and wrote a book about her experiences called Southward Ho!"



Campbell also befriended Edward Lear, whom we last encountered in Albania. "Between them," says Carrington, "Miss Campbell and Lear made Corsica fashionable, and the British soon began to settle there... They seem to have lived in style. The Corsicans remember them mainly as a people who wore top-hats, which had never been seen in the island before."


There are plenty of other fine buildings along this road:




Meanwhile, we have started researching Corsican cuisine, which (what a pity) is going to be a long job...






This is a familiar refrain, but I'm already regretting not scheduling in more time for Ajaccio. I'd gained the impression that it was all a bit more frantic (I recall that someone mentioned it was more for people looking for "a little excitement"). But at this time of year, it's low-key and pleasant. The weather is warm (high teens) but less blindingly sunny than the south coast of the mainland. The skies are always doing something different, and every evening is enlivened by huge murmurs of small black birds. This apartment is really very comfortable, and will be hard to leave. And certainly, there's lots to do that we've not had time to do. Never mind. Tomorrow, come what may, we move on. I'm sure it will be lovely in Calvi too.