Holidays...
Bastia
Bastia [Ph. Desjobert ]
An Evocation of Bastia ...
It is one of the most beautiful towns of Corsica. But it requires without
a doubt much care and much imagination that other places of the island which
are sufficient unto themselves. Italian city by its origins, it kept from
it the choir and the Citadel.
Between the old quarter of Terra Vecchia, founded in 1380, and the Terra
Nova one, which was begun one century later, the Genoese
Domination sets, nevertheless, Bastia has sometimes napolitan accents
with its cracked houses, its balconies of wroughtiron and its façades
where garland of multicoloured linen cheerfully flap.
We can visit Bastia as a tourist : the Saint-Nicolas Square on which
we saunter before sitting at the terrace of a café, the Romieu Garden
by which we reach the Citadel, the Ethnographic
Museum and the museum of the Sea, the churches and the chapels with
their generous setting. Bastia has several religious sights, with a chiselled
silver Assumption which is due to an artist from Siena of the 17th century,
and the Black Christ of the Sainte-Croix Church, which was found floating
on the waters between four wonderful lights.
It is celebrated the 3rd of May, feast of the Sainte Croix intervention,
and the statue is carried at the head of a procession through the streets
of the town.
But the beauty of Bastia, mysterious town for the one who does not leave
in it, is not in the marbles and golds of its churches. It is in the houses
with closed shutters but with half-opened jalousies. You have to bother
to try to walk and to get lost in the alleys, to discover it.
[...]A music wanders between the houses, sweet as a summer evening when
music is long to stop in the horizon. Then Bastia shakes off its modernism
and finds again its greatness of the past, when the patrician families
lived in the honourable wealth that provided them the cosmopolitan trade.
[...]The music streches out in the steep-sided alleys and invades the
city.
Bastia : town of culture, crossroads of nations, with a fate linked to
the one of an Italy which is streaming with richness.
[...]From the Saint-Nicolas square which faces the sea, alleys with
the mediterranean colors and scents go up.
Above the mountain of Cardu, whose we can see the summit, a pass exists
where the Libecciu.. This wind
swoops down on tile town like a bird of pray and seizes all what it finds.
The puff of wind dies away very high in the sky and Bastia regains its
calm appearance.
Extract of Terres de Corse Gabriel-Xavier
Culioli
holidays in Bastia - North Corsica
- Visit the town
- Cultural Activities
- Visit the Churches
- The Saint Jean-Baptiste Church
- The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception
- The Sainte-Marie Church
- The Sainte-Croix Chapel
- Excursions around Bastia
- San Martino di Lota
- The Excavations of Mariana
- Sports
For any information contact The
Tourist Office
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