Corsica is the Mediterranean island that France and Italy fought over for centuries and neither has ever quite managed to claim, a mountain range rising from the sea, the most mountainous island in the Mediterranean (the highest peak, Monte Cinto, is 2,706 metres, higher than anything in mainland Britain), a landscape of granite cliffs, chestnut forests, and beaches of a clarity and a turquoise that seem to belong to the Caribbean rather than to Europe. Corsica was Genoese for 500 years (1284–1768), French for 20 minutes when Genoa sold it to Louis XV in 1768 (the Corsicans, led by Pasquale Paoli, fought a war of independence and lost), and the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769, in Ajaccio, the Corsican who conquered Europe). The result is a culture, a cuisine, and a character that is neither French nor Italian but uniquely Corsican: the polyphonic singing, the chestnut flour, the maquis, the dense, aromatic scrubland of myrtle, juniper, and rockrose that Napoleon said he could smell from the deck of his ship as he sailed back from exile on Elba, and that gave the French Resistance its name (the maquisards, the fighters who took to the hills in the Second World War). Here is a quick tour of Corsica.

Quick Facts: Corsica

• Bonifacio, the most spectacular town in Corsica: A citadel perched on a limestone cliff 70 metres above the sea, the oldest town on the island (founded in 828 by the Tuscan Count Bonifacio), the harbour, a narrow inlet carved into the rock, sheltering the yachts and the fishing boats, the medieval streets of the Haute Ville (the upper town), the Escalier du Roi d’Aragon (the King of Aragon’s Steps, 187 steps carved into the cliff face, supposedly in a single night by the Aragonese besiegers of 1420. The reality: the steps were probably carved by the Franciscan monks to access a freshwater well at the base of the cliff. The legend is better. ~€5. The descent takes 15 minutes, the climb back up is the price of the view), and the view from the Cimetière Marin (the Marine Cemetery) over the Strait of Bonifacio to Sardinia, 12 km away, visible on a clear day. The boat trip to the Îles Lavezzi (the granite islands in the strait, the most beautiful beaches and the clearest water in Corsica, a marine reserve, the sea the colour of swimming-pool water. ~€40 for a half-day tour. The swimming, the snorkelling, and the silence are worth every cent. Allow a full day with the boat trip)
• The GR20, the greatest hiking trail in Europe: Mentioned in our French hiking guide, the GR20 (180 km diagonally across the island, 15 days) is the essential Corsican experience for the fit and the adventurous. The northern section (Calenzana to Vizzavona, 9 days) is the most dramatic, the granite slabs, the knife-edge ridges, the high-altitude lakes, and the most demanding. The refuges (book months ahead for July and August) are the social heart of the trail, the communal meals, the camaraderie, and the sense of shared achievement are as memorable as the mountains
• The food of the maquis: Corsican cuisine is the taste of the island itself: the chestnut flour (used in everything from bread to cakes to the pulenda, a chestnut-flour polenta that was the staple food of the Corsican interior for centuries), the charcuterie (the figatellu, a smoked liver sausage, the essential Corsican product; the lonzu, the coppa, the prisuttu, the cured hams, flavoured with the herbs of the maquis that the pigs forage on), the brocciu (the Corsican ricotta, a fresh cheese, made from ewe’s milk, used in everything from omelettes to the fiadone, the Corsican cheesecake, flavoured with lemon zest), and the wines of Patrimonio and Ajaccio (the Nielluccio and the Sciaccarellu grapes, the distinctive, characterful reds and rosés, the taste of the Corsican sun). Essential meal: a plate of charcuterie, a bowl of pulenda, a glass of Patrimonio rouge, and a slice of fiadone, eaten on a terrace with a view of the mountains. The best tables are in the villages of the interior (the Balagne, the “Garden of Corsica,” the villages of Sant’Antonino and Pigna, the most beautiful on the island) and the restaurants of the coast between Calvi and L’Île-Rousse