Museu di a Corsica and citadelle
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Corte

The monumental gateway just behind the Palais National leads from place Poilu into Corte's Genoese citadelle, whose lower courtyard is dominated by the modern buildings of Museu di a Corsica (June 20–Sept 19 daily 10am–8pm; April–June 19 & Sept 20–Oct daily except Tues 10am–6pm; Nov–March Tues–Sat 10am–6pm; €5.30), a state-of-the-art museum inaugurated in 1997 to house the collection of ethnographer Révérend Père Louis Doazan, a Catholic priest who spent 27 years amassing a vast array of objects relating to the island's traditional transhumant and peasant past. Gifted to the state in 1972, the three thousand pieces he collected remained in storage for nearly a quarter of a century until a suitable site could be found to exhibit them. The austere building certainly makes the most of its historically significant location at the heart of the island, but ultimately upstages the lacklustre selection of old farm implements, craft tools and peasant dress inside it.

The museum's entrance charge also admits you to Corte's principal landmark, the citadelle. The only such fortress in the interior of the island, the Genoese structure served as a base for the Foreign Legion from 1962 until 1984, but now houses a pretty feeble exhibition of nineteenth-century photographs. It's reached by a huge staircase of Restonica marble, which leads to the medieval tower known as the Nid d'Aigle (Eagle's Nest). The fortress, of which the tower is the only original part, was built by Vincentello d'Istria in 1420, and the barracks were added during the reign of Louis-Philippe (1830–48). These were later converted into a prison, in use as recently as World War II, when the Italian occupiers incarcerated Corsican resistance fighters in tiny cells. Adjacent to the cells is a former watchtower which at the time of Paoli's government was inhabited by the hangman.