A veritable miniature continent, Corsica is a French Mediterranean island with a Italian flavour, due to historical ties with the Italian peninsula, that offers its visitors diverse and varied regions, all in one destination where you are sure to feel like you are a million miles away. Named « Kalliste » (the most beautiful) by the Ancient Greeks, Corsica boasts a surprising natural heritage of beaches of white sand, crystal clear waters, forests and waterfalls, cliffs of red granite. The fourth largest island in the Mediterranean offers more than 200 beaches and its mountains comprise two-thirds of the island. Marked by a tumultuous history, thanks to many invasions, Corsica has an original and contrasting identity, from its Roman, Pisan and Genoese heritage to Napoleon, born in 1769 in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio. Corsica was under Genoese domination for nearly five hundred years and the vestiges of this civilisation are numerous on the island, beautiful bridges, towers scattered along the coast and valled old cities that still are the nucleus of today Corsican coastal towns.