Castagniccia: Inland Corsican Villages and Chestnut Forests

Two days in the Castagniccia, a region named after the chestnut tree, planted on a large scale under the Republic of Genoa and long the staple food of inland Corsica. The route links Piedicroce and the Orezza convent, seat of the Corsican national assembly, with its iron-rich mineral springs and the baroque church of San Petru, La Porta and its forty-five-metre baroque bell tower, the tallest on the island, Morosaglia, birthplace of Pascal Paoli, father of the Corsican nation and now a museum, and finally Cervione with its ethnographic museum facing the sea. This is a dense, green and almost empty Corsica, where entire villages have emptied out. The roads are very narrow and slow. Autumn, when the chestnuts fall, is the best season.