Bastia Audio-Tour: Echos von Palästen, Märkten & Heiligen Steinen

On your left, Place Saint-Nicolas reveals itself as a vast rectangular esplanade framed by pale stone edges, rows of tall palms, and long nineteenth-century façades.

This is the great breathing space of Bastia, the city’s social heart facing the commercial port, and one of the largest squares in France, stretching roughly two hundred and eighty metres by eighty. It feels open in a rather grand way, yet the spirit of the place is intimate. Bastiais families have treated it as shared ground for generations, and that easy mixture of promenade, conversation, and play is part of its character still.

The name comes from a chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas. It stood here in the Genoese period, quietly giving the square its identity, until the city pulled it down in eighteen eighty-nine because it blocked the line of Boulevard Paoli. Before this became a proper civic space, it was little more than rough land near the governor’s residence. To the south sat an enormous rock called U Monte. To the north ran the Fangu, a river that once marked the edge of this open ground.

Like so many important public places, it changed names as power changed hands. It began as Place Narbonne, honouring the Count of Narbonne, sent to Corsica by King Louis the Fifteenth. During the Revolution, soldiers drilled here, so people called it the Champ de Mars, literally a parade ground. In eighteen sixteen it became Place de Rivière, after the governor, the Marquis Charles de Rivière. Then the July Monarchy renamed it Place Louis-Philippe. Only later did Saint-Nicolas settle back into place, as if the old memory had simply outlasted politics.

The square you see now took shape by effort, engineering, and a little audacity. In eighteen thirty-one, the architect Louis Guasco planned improvements, including the great retaining wall along the sea. Three years later, the mayor hurried the work along by ordering the city’s rubble and building spoil dumped here. Then came an even bolder enlargement at the end of the nineteenth century. Workers excavating the Turretta railway tunnel brought more debris, and the city used it to fill the inlet of the Fangu. The tunnel works turned deadly: an explosion threw men into the water, and seven drowned. Even this elegant promenade carries a hard edge of sacrifice beneath its paving.

Then came the finishing touches. Plane trees arrived in eighteen ninety-four and eighteen ninety-eight. A balustrade followed. In nineteen oh seven, fifty palms from a mainland nursery took root and gave the square its unmistakable silhouette. Not long after, tourists, especially English ones, began to flock to Bastia.

Look around the edges and you glimpse another chapter: the grand “American” palaces, built by Corsicans who made fortunes in South America. The Roncajolo building along the south side came from brothers enriched by trade between Marseille and Venezuela, and in eighteen sixty-nine it welcomed Empress Eugénie. At the lower end once stood the lavish Cyrnos Palace hotel, opened in nineteen eleven and destroyed in the American bombardments of nineteen forty-three.

The square also keeps its memories in stone and bronze. The war memorial to the north shows Margherita Paccioni offering her last surviving son to Pascal Paoli after losing two others in Corsica’s war of independence. On the back, a bronze relief depicts a voceru, a traditional improvised lament sung for the dead. Farther south, Napoleon stands in sculpted splendour, not really as a Roman emperor, despite what people often say, but with the attributes of Jupiter. Nearby, the music kiosk of nineteen oh eight, beautifully restored in twenty twenty, adds a gentler note.

And that is the secret of Place Saint-Nicolas: it is Bastia’s memory turned into open space. It is open at all hours, so whenever you are ready, continue on towards the Market Square.

On your left, look for a broad stone-paved square edged by plane trees and pale masonry façades, with the old town hall’s triangular pediment standing out as its most formal marker.

This is Bastia’s old Market Square, known in Corsican as Piazza di u Merca. The word merca is simply a shortened form of mercatu, meaning market, and that plain little name tells you a great deal. For generations, this was one of the city’s busiest hearts, a place of barter, gossip, arguments, greetings, and the sort of news that travelled faster by voice than by letter.

Yet the market did not begin here. Under Genoese rule in the seventeenth century, traders gathered up in the Citadel, at a place called A Chjappa, near what is now the upper part of Rue Saint-Michel. In the eighteenth century, a fish market opened elsewhere. Then, in the nineteenth century, the main market moved again, into the Guadellu district on Rue Vattelapesca, where people called it the New Market. Only in eighteen eighty did the market finally settle here, in this square.

Seven years later, the municipal council planted the plane trees that still give the space its outline. A cast-iron fountain once stood here too, adding a note of ceremony, but that has disappeared. Even so, the square still keeps the feeling of an outdoor room, framed by old stone, civic ambition, and memory.

And memory here has a rather sly streak. Before the market arrived, this ground was not a square at all, but open land and gardens belonging to the Favalelli family. After the French conquest, Count Marbeuf chose this very spot for a wooden theatre in seventeen seventy-four. He did not act from pure love of drama. He had a political purpose. Bastia largely spoke Corsican and leaned warmly toward Italian culture; only a small educated elite used French with ease. Marbeuf hoped French-language performances would teach the language and speed up assimilation. It failed. Bastia’s audiences preferred Italian plays and concerts in other venues, and that preference lingered far into the twentieth century. The Marbeuf theatre finally disappeared in eighteen eighty-one, two years after the opening of the city’s newer theatre.

Around you, the square still reads like a cast of characters. The old town hall, known locally as A Merria Vechja, began life as an army building. The city bought it in eighteen fifty-five, and by the late nineteenth century its façade had acquired the balcony, cornice, and triangular pediment you can see, along with a relief of Bastia’s coat of arms, the little castle that recalls Leonello Lomellini and the fortress that gave the town its name. The building served as the town hall until nineteen eighty-two; now it hosts weddings and civil records. Nearby, Saint-Jean-Baptiste watches over the quarter, and the old Favalelli house still hints at the powerful families who shaped Terra Vechja.

This square reveals Bastia at its most intimate: practical, proud, and quietly theatrical.

When you are ready, continue toward Saint-Jean-Baptiste and let the square’s murmur follow you.

Dies war nie nur eine prächtige Kirche; es war eine Arbeitskirche für eine Hafengemeinschaft. Die Seeleute hatten ihre eigene Kapelle, die der Fischerkapelle gegenüber dem Kirchenschiff gegenüberlag, als würden sich die beiden Bruderschaften noch immer schweigend anerkennen. Der Hochaltar glänzt mit polychromem Marmor, was so viel wie vielfarbiger Stein bedeutet, gefertigt im Jahr 1694 von Honoré Pellé, einem französischen Handwerker, der in Genua arbeitete. Es gibt eine Kanzel aus farbenprächtigem Marmor von 1781 und eine außergewöhnliche Orgelempore, die 1742 von dem bastianischen Handwerker Giovanbattista Terrigo geschnitzt wurde. Außerhalb dieser Mauern behielt die Kirche ihren Einfluss auf die lokale Vorstellungskraft. Am Vorabend des Johannisfestes entzündet Bastia den fucarè, ein großes Feuer am alten Hafen. Und eines der beliebtesten Lieder der Stadt, U Campanile di San Ghjuvà, feiert genau diesen Glockenturm und das Leben, das sich um ihn herum versammelt. Frankreich erkannte die Kirche im Jahr 2000 als historisches Denkmal an. Wenn Sie später einen Blick hineinwerfen möchten, ist die Kirche in der Regel täglich von acht Uhr morgens bis sieben Uhr abends geöffnet. San Ghjuvà ist Bastia in Stein: andächtig, maritim und leise theatralisch. Wenn Sie bereit sind, gehen Sie weiter und lassen Sie die Altstadt ihr nächstes Geheimnis enthüllen.

text

Look for a modest pale façade with tall rectangular openings and a simple street-level entrance marked by the name Arte Mare.

This stop tells a very Bastia story, because Arte Mare is not simply a place or a title: it is a declaration. In nineteen eighty-two, during the Riacquistu, the Corsican cultural reawakening that pushed the island to reclaim its language and artistic voice, a group of passionate film lovers founded a festival here in Bastia. They first called it U festivale di u filmu di e culture mediterranie, the festival of Mediterranean cultures on film. The timing matters. That same year, the University of Corte opened, France Three Corse launched its regional branch, and France Inter began regional broadcasts that pointed toward Radio Corse Frequenza Mora. All at once, Corsica was speaking more loudly in its own name, and Arte Mare joined that chorus through cinema.

The first edition arrived with remarkable confidence: seventeen films in competition, eighteen invited guests, a retrospective devoted to the Taviani brothers, and even a week focused on Moroccan cinema. According to its organisers, it is among the oldest festivals in Corsica. That is rather lovely, because it began not with grandeur, but with conviction.

Its life has not been perfectly smooth, which somehow suits a Mediterranean festival. After the first three editions, it closed for three years. In nineteen eighty-eight, it returned and carried on without interruption until nineteen ninety-nine. That year, after an edition devoted to Morocco, the festival also hosted the first concert in France by Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra. Then disagreements split the organisers, and the festival stopped again.

In two thousand and one, after a one-year pause, it came back under a broader name: U festivale di u filmu e di l’arte mediterranie. Film remained at its heart, but the ambition widened into a celebration of mixed arts, where cinema could meet music, literature, and visual art. Since then, the association Arte Mare has carried it forward, and it has even launched other festivals, including Histoires en mai, devoted to history books and historical fiction, and Cine Donne, a festival of films by women.

Each October, over eight days, Arte Mare now presents around eighty films: features, shorts, documentaries, fiction, even animation. Screenings spread through Bastia, from the municipal theatre to Alb’Oru, the Noir et Blanc gallery, cinemas, and libraries. Throughout the year, it also partners with Le Régent for monthly Mediterranean screenings. Since twenty eighteen, part of the programme has travelled to Ajaccio, and another partnership links it to the open-air cinema U Murianincu.

The prizes reveal its character. There is the Grand Prix Arte Mare for a Mediterranean feature, a public prize, an R-C-F-M Petru Mari prize for music and soundtrack, awards for Corsican fiction and documentary, and one called Hors les Murs, meaning outside the walls, judged by inmates at the Borgo remand prison. That detail gives the festival a particular moral grace: cinema here reaches beyond the usual audience. It also awards the Prix Ulysse, a literary prize honouring both a major body of work and a first Mediterranean novel.

At forty years old in twenty twenty-two, after the pandemic years when streaming platforms filled the silence of closed cinemas, Arte Mare felt more defiant than ever.

Arte Mare reminds Bastia that the Mediterranean is not an edge of the map, but a conversation.

When you are ready, continue on toward the synagogue, where another layer of Bastia’s identity quietly comes into view.

On your right, look for a modest pale-stone ground-floor façade with a simple rectangular entrance, its restrained historic frontage marked as the synagogue of Beth Meir.

Its discretion is part of its meaning. This synagogue does not announce itself with grandeur; it keeps faith in the intimate scale of the old town. Beth Meir, founded in nineteen thirty-four at number three rue du Castagno, grew from exile, survival, and a very stubborn choice to remain.

The story begins far from Bastia. During the First World War, Jewish families of Algerian and Moroccan origin were living in Tiberias and Aleppo, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Some held French citizenship through colonial-era legal arrangements, and when they refused to serve alongside the Germans, the Ottoman authorities expelled them in the summer of nineteen fifteen. They left through Beirut and Jaffa on two American ships, endured a rejected stop in Crete, and finally reached Ajaccio on French vessels on the fourteenth of December, nineteen fifteen. There were seven hundred and forty-four refugees, including about two hundred children.

Ajaccio received them with remarkable solidarity. The prefect, Monsieur Henry, the mayor, Monsieur Pugliesi-Conti, and the Alliance Israélite Universelle organised shelter in the former Catholic seminary. Children went to school. Rabbi Jacob Aknine of Tiberias led worship. Yet tensions grew inside the refugee group, and in February nineteen sixteen about one hundred and eighty Moroccan Jews moved here to Bastia, settling in the new port docks and in the citadel.

Here, they met another community already in place: the Turchinos, around one hundred and fifty Jews who had fled Constantinople in the eighteen nineties and chosen Bastia, the island’s great commercial port. Together they built firmer foundations. They formed the Jewish religious association of Bastia, named Salomon Bensamoun chief rabbi, and improvised a larger synagogue in a room at the docks. The nearby community of Livorno sent a Sefer Torah, a handwritten scroll of the first five books of the Bible, the heart of synagogue worship.

Many refugees sailed back toward Palestine on the fourth of August, nineteen twenty, but not all. Some families stayed in Corsica. Others returned later, having found hardship and violence there. Then came Rav Meir Toledano. His younger brother had briefly taken refuge here and spoke so warmly of Bastia that Toledano arrived in nineteen twenty-four with his wife and children and gave this synagogue its decisive impulse. He named it Beth Knesset Beth Meir, honouring Rabbi Meir, one of the great sages of the Mishnah, the foundational written collection of Jewish oral teaching.

Behind this modest frontage lies an apartment adapted for prayer. It was never designed as a synagogue, yet its Pisan-style rooms offered a striking sacred space, especially the double barrel-vaulted ceilings painted by Guy-Paul Chauder. The main prayer room opens onto a women’s room and a beth midrash, a house of study, with a welcoming hall and kitchen completing the whole.

During the Second World War, even under Italian and German occupation, no French Jew in Corsica was deported to the Nazi extermination camps. Men from Bastia were interned at Asco, and families in southern Corsica endured restrictions, but Prefect Paul Balley helped protect the community. That memory still shapes the island’s reputation as an island of the righteous.

Beth Meir remains quiet for much of the year, yet it endures as a precious sign of belonging in Bastia’s historic heart.

When you are ready, continue on toward Saint-Charles-Borromée, carrying this small, steadfast story with you.

Vor Ihnen erhebt sich eine barocke Fassade aus hellem Stein in zwei übereinanderliegenden Ebenen, die über einer breiten monumentalen Treppe steht und von einem dreieckigen Giebel mit großen geschwungenen Voluten gekrönt wird. Dies ist San Carlu, die Kirche Saint-Charles-Borromée, und sie genießt in Bastia einen stillen Vorzug: Viele halten sie für die erste Barockkirche auf ganz Korsika. Ihre Fassade folgt dem Jesuitenstil, der durch die Kirche Il Gesù in Rom berühmt wurde. Achten Sie auf die starken vertikalen Pilaster, die schmalere obere Ebene und die Statuen des Heiligen Franz Xaver und des Heiligen Ignatius von Loyola neben dem Eingang. Wenn Sie die gesamte Komposition auf sich wirken lassen wollen, werfen Sie einen Blick auf das Bild auf Ihrem Bildschirm. Die Geschichte beginnt mit den Jesuiten, der Gesellschaft Jesu, die 1540 von Ignatius von Loyola gegründet wurde. Er wollte Priester, die ebenso lehren wie predigen konnten, daher bestand er auf einer langen Ausbildung, zehn Jahre Studium, bevor sie vollständig ausgebildet waren. In den Jahren 1552 und 1553 schickte er zwei Jesuiten nach Bastia, Pater Silvestro Landini und Pater Emanuel Gomes. Sie kamen, um den Glauben zu verbreiten, sicherlich, aber auch, um ärmere Familien zu unterrichten. Um 1601 hatten die ersten Unterrichtsstunden in der Nähe dieses Ortes begonnen.

Then the place grew into a full Jesuit complex. Builders started the college and church in sixteen twelve and finished in sixteen thirty-five. At first, the church honoured Saint Ignatius himself. The adjoining college never lost its educational purpose; today it survives as the Simon Vinciguerra school, often described as one of the oldest colleges in Corsica.

Its name changed because politics changed. After the Jesuits were expelled in seventeen sixty-nine, the building passed to the confraternity of San Carlu, a religious brotherhood, and the church took the name of Saint Charles Borromeo. Inside, the seventeenth-century stucco decoration still survives. There is even a deliciously telling detail: a ceiling medallion once showed Saint Ignatius in black, but after the Jesuits were forced out, the confraternity altered the clothing so the figure could pass as Saint Charles instead.

This church has also heard the harder sounds of history. In eighteen fourteen, enemies of Napoleon gathered here under Frédien Vidau and Salvatore Viale. A Committee of Public Safety met inside and proclaimed Corsica’s break with France, calling for the return of the Anglo-Corsican kingdom. Later, in nineteen seventy-one, the church opened another chapter: the first Mass in the Corsican language was celebrated here, sung in paghjella, the island’s rich traditional polyphonic chant.

If you hope to go inside, the church is usually open only on Sunday mornings, from nine until noon. San Carlu keeps Bastia’s faith, learning, and rebellion folded into one splendid façade. When you are ready, continue on toward U Puntettu, where the city opens itself in another way.

Look for a tight cluster of tall stone-and-plaster houses packed into a wedge of narrow lanes, with the sweeping Romieu staircase as its unmistakable marker.

This is U Puntettu, the “little bridge,” a name borrowed from a small bridge that once crossed the Guadellu River before the waterway was channelled into the Old Port. The quarter sits in a narrow seam between the harbour and the Citadel, and that position explains everything about it. When the Genoese secured Terra Nova, the fortified upper town, in the fourteenth century, the lower district of Terra Vechja grew below it, and U Puntettu became one of its most intimate pieces.

No one can say exactly when the first houses appeared here, which only adds to its quiet allure. What we do know is that wealthy Bastia families left their mark. The imposing Palazzu Rinesi-Romieu rose here in the nineteenth century for the Rinesi, an important merchant family; later, a Rinesi daughter married Romieu, a master cutler from Langres, and the name changed with the marriage. Nearby stood the Casa Montesoro, another merchant family residence, and the Casa Bonavita, linked to descendants of Joseph Bonavita, who became a general under Louis the Fifteenth.

Then there is the Romieu staircase itself, designed in the nineteenth century by the Bastia architect Paul-Augustin Viale. Its ramp, stairway, and garden gained historic monument protection in two thousand and seventeen. Writers noticed this quarter too: Sebastianu Dalzeto made U Puntettu famous in Pesciu Anguilla, the first novel ever written in the Corsican language.

Small in scale, U Puntettu carries an astonishing weight of memory.

When you are ready, continue upward toward the Governors’ Palace, where Bastia’s story grows even more commanding.

Vor Ihnen steht eine Festung aus hellem Stein mit einer breiten rechteckigen Fassade, einem massiven runden Turm und einem kleinen Glockenturm, der auf der Dachlinie thront. Dies ist der Palais des Gouverneurs, der Gouverneurspalast, und in einem sehr realen Sinne beginnt Bastia hier. In den achtziger Jahren des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts wählte der genuesische Gouverneur Leonello Lomellini diesen felsigen Vorsprung über dem Ufer in der Nähe der Bucht von Ficaghjola und dem kleinen Fischerhafen von Portu Cardu aus einem einfachen Grund: Kontrolle. Er wollte einen befestigten Ort in Meeresnähe, von wo aus der Handel überwacht werden konnte und Verstärkungen aus Genua im Falle von Unruhen schnell landen konnten. Diese erste Festung wurde „Bastia“ genannt, und die ganze Stadt übernahm schließlich diesen Namen. Die ersten Jahre waren alles andere als ruhig. Im Jahr 1393 eroberte Graf Arrigo della Rocca das Fort. Es ging durch andere Hände, darunter Vincentellu d’Istria, bis Genua es 1437 zurückeroberte. Lange Zeit blieb es eine bescheidene Befestigungsanlage, doch die Stadt um sie herum begann an Stärke zu gewinnen. 1476 errichtete Antonio Tagliacarne, ein Baumeister aus Levanto in Ligurien, eine Ansammlung von Häusern daneben. Das wurde der erste Kern von Terranova, der Neustadt, die vom alten Hafen unterhalb durch Terravecchia getrennt war. Was Sie jetzt sehen, trägt Schicht um Schicht dieser Veränderungen in sich. Der große runde Turm ist der Torrione. Verdickte Mauern und vorspringende Bastionen, jene nach außen gerichteten Verteidigungsvorsprünge, machten den Ort zum Kern der Zitadelle. Wenn Sie auf Ihren Bildschirm schauen, macht die Nahaufnahme der Schießscharten diesen militärischen Zweck wunderbar deutlich. Ein Jahrhundert, nachdem das erste Fort hier errichtet wurde, zogen die Gouverneure richtig ein. Der Palast wurde gleichzeitig Wohnsitz, Gericht, Kaserne, Archiv und Kapelle. Im Ostflügel befand sich die sala maggiore, der große Saal, in dem der Gouverneur Besucher empfing und den Wahlen des obersten Magistrats von Bastia, des Podestà, und der „Zwölf Adligen“ der Stadt vorsaß. Selbst die Gewölbe übermittelten eine Botschaft: Eingemeißelte Schlusssteine zeigten den heiligen Georg, der den Drachen tötet - das Symbol der genuesischen Autorität, die Korsika regierte.

Doch Macht hatte hier immer einen Schatten. Unter Ihren Füßen befanden sich die Gefängniszellen, vierzehn an der Zahl im frühen neunzehnten Jahrhundert, jede mit ihrem eigenen Namen. Eine Zelle für Frauen hieß Il Panno. Eine andere, beängstigender, hieß Inferno. Im Jahr 1812 wurden hier dreihundert römische Priester inhaftiert, die Napoleons Eid verweigerten. Einer von ihnen beschrieb den Gestank, die Insekten und das Wasser, das aus den Zisternen sickerte; er sagte, die untersten Zellen unter dem Meeresspiegel fühlten sich an wie das Vorzimmer der Hölle. Nach der französischen Annexion im Jahr 1768 änderte der Palast erneut seinen Charakter. Regierungsbüros zogen anderswohin. Später diente er als Kaserne, dann als Caserne Watrin. Während der deutschen Besatzung verminten und zerstörten abziehende Truppen den West- und Nordflügel. Wenn Sie möchten, werfen Sie einen Blick auf das Vorher-Nachher-Bild in der App; es zeigt ganz still, wie sich die Präsenz des Palastes im Laufe des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts verändert hat. Was überlebte, wurde zu einem Museum von Bastia, ein weitaus sanfteres Schicksal für einen Ort, der als Festung geboren wurde. Wenn Sie wieder hinein möchten: Es ist täglich von neun Uhr morgens bis fünf Uhr nachmittags geöffnet. Mehr als jedes andere Gebäude in Bastia sagt Ihnen dieser Palast, dass die Stadt zuerst ein Akt der Verteidigung war und erst dann ein Zuhause. Wenn Sie soweit sind, gehen Sie weiter in Richtung Sainte-Marie, wo sich die Geschichte von der Regierung dem Glauben zuwendet.

Look to your left for a pale stone church front arranged in two tiers, capped with sharp triangular pediments, and marked by a tall bell tower rising beside it.

This is Sainte-Marie, or in Corsican, Santa Maria, and for centuries it stood at the very centre of Bastia’s authority. From fifteen seventy until eighteen oh two, it served as the seat of the diocese of Mariana and Accia, before that diocese was attached to Ajaccio. Yet the church carried more than a bishop’s weight. People here considered it the most prestigious church in all Corsica, because this is where governors handed over power. The departing governor placed the keys and the sceptre of the Kingdom of Corsica on a silver tray and presented them to his successor. Inside the choir, the space around the main altar, two thrones faced one another: the bishop on one side, the governor on the other. Faith and government, eye to eye.

Its story begins with Bastia itself. In thirteen eighty, the Genoese governor Leonello Lomellini raised a fortress on this promontory to protect ships landing in the natural inlet below. That stronghold gave the town its name. As houses gathered around the walls, the upper town, Terra Nova, needed its own parish church. Builders began one here in fourteen eighty-nine and called it Santa Maria della Consolazione, later also Santa Maria l’Arrimbata, “the leaning” or “the braced” Saint Mary, because it rested against the rock.

That first church did not enjoy a peaceful life. French invasions and war scarred Bastia in the middle of the sixteenth century, and by fifteen sixty-three the building threatened to collapse. So in sixteen oh four, Bishop Geronimo del Pozzo launched the church you see now. Even then, it did not come easily. In sixteen eleven, the vaults over the three aisles collapsed. The project survived because a Bastia sea captain, Giovanni Pasquale Corso, died in Seville in sixteen twelve after making a fortune in the spice trade between America and Spain, and left a generous legacy to finish the work. By sixteen nineteen the main structure stood complete, and in sixteen twenty-five Bishop Giulio del Pozzo consecrated it.

The façade before you has changed more than once. The earliest front was baroque, a dramatic style full of movement and ornament, but later builders reshaped it in the eighteenth century, adding triangular pediments and statue niches. The bell tower rose in sixteen twenty, and the forecourt took shape in sixteen sixty-six.

If you go inside, the reward is lavish. The church has three long aisles, richly dressed in gold and marble. After a cholera epidemic in eighteen sixty-six spared the city, Bastia’s people paid to beautify the interior with white Carrara marble, grey-blue marble from Corte, red Levanto marble, and green Bevincu stone. You will also find gilded stucco by Francesco Marengo, painted vault decoration completed in eighteen thirty-five, seven bishops’ hats hanging high above the choir, and a silver Virgin shaped from donations given by Bastia’s own families.

Sainte-Marie feels less like a parish church than a stage where Bastia declared who held power, and why. If you would like to step inside, it generally opens from eight A-M to six P-M, and on Sundays until noon; when you are ready, continue on to Sainte-Croix for the final chapter nearby.

Zu Ihrer Linken erscheint Sainte-Croix als eine blasse Steinkirche mit einer schlichten rechteckigen Fassade, einem tiefen dunklen Portal und päpstlichen Emblemen, die über dem Eingang eingemeißelt sind. Ihr Äußeres bewahrt seine Geheimnisse ziemlich gut. Von hier draußen würden Sie vielleicht nie erraten, dass dies eines der meistbesuchten Denkmäler in Bastia ist oder dass sich hinter dieser zurückhaltenden Fassade eines der prunkvollsten Interieurs auf Korsika verbirgt. Dieser Kontrast ist Teil ihres Charmes: ein bescheidenes Äußeres und im Inneren eine kleine Explosion aus Gold. Sainte-Croix gehört zur alten Zitadelle, der Oberstadt, die einst als Terra Nova bekannt war. Im genuesischen Bastia war die Stadt sowohl für die Gottesverehrung als auch für das tägliche Leben in zwei Teile gespalten: Die Oberstadt war der Sainte-Marie unterstellt, während sich die Unterstadt der Saint-Jean-Baptiste zuwandte. Hier in den Höhen wurde die Bruderschaft von Sainte-Croix, eine religiöse Laienbruderschaft, zur wichtigsten im Bezirk und tatsächlich zur ältesten in Bastia. Seit dem frühen fünfzehnten Jahrhundert taten ihre Mitglieder weit mehr als nur beten. Nebenan betrieben sie das genuesische Krankenhaus und kümmerten sich um Arme, Behinderte und verlassene Kinder. Ich finde, das ist ein ziemlich bewegendes Detail: Die Frömmigkeit hier hatte praktische Hände. Mit päpstlicher Erlaubnis errichtete die Bruderschaft ihre erste Kapelle im Jahr 1542 auf Land, das nicht Bastia gehörte, sondern San Giovanni in Laterano in Rom, der eigenen Kathedrale des Papstes. Diese Verbindung kündigt sich noch immer über der Tür an. Die Inschrift verkündet das Band mit dem Lateran, der Mutter und dem Haupt aller Kirchen. Wenn Sie nach oben blicken, erklären diese päpstlichen Zeichen, die Tiara und die Schlüssel des Heiligen Petrus, stillschweigend eine wahrlich großartige Verbindung. Die Kirche, die Sie jetzt sehen, nahm um 1600 Gestalt an und ersetzte die frühere, kleinere Kapelle. Später, im Jahr 1818, entfernten Arbeiter einen riesigen Felsen, der einst den Vorplatz einnahm, und legten ein Kieselsteinmosaik nach genuesischer Art, wobei Steine aus Miomu verwendet wurden. Wenn Sie sich das Bild auf Ihrem Bildschirm ansehen, können Sie diesen Charakter des Innenhofs klarer erkennen. Aber das wahre Wunder wartet im Inneren. Sainte-Croix wurde berühmt für seine vergoldete Stuckdekoration im genuesischen Barocchetto-Stil, einem leichteren, verspielteren Zweig des Barocks, nahe dem Rokoko. Zwischen den 1750er und 1770er Jahren bedeckten korsische und ligurische Handwerker die Wände und das Gewölbe mit geschwungenen Blättern, Blumengirlanden, Muscheln und Engelsfiguren. Zu den wichtigsten Meistern gehörten Tomaso Mencacci, Matteo Vacca und Antonio Firpo. Über dem Hochaltar hängt eine Verkündigung, die 1633 von dem florentinischen Künstler Giovanni Bilivert gemalt wurde, und am Gewölbe erscheint eine weitere Verkündigung in einem Deckenmedaillon von Bastias eigenem Saverio Farinole, eingerahmt, als würden vier kleine Engel es in die Höhe tragen.

Und dann ist da noch die Figur, die dieser Kirche ihre besondere Aura verleiht: der Schwarze Christus, hier bekannt als U Cristu Negru, das wundertätige Kruzifix. Der Legende nach fanden es zwei Sardinenfischer, Camugli und Giuliani, im Jahr 1428 auf See. Bastia ehrt es noch immer jedes Jahr am dritten Mai. Werfen Sie einen Blick auf das App-Bild für dieses dunkle, fesselnde Gesicht. Seit 1931 genießt Sainte-Croix einen geschützten historischen Status, was für einen Ort, der Glaube, Nächstenliebe und Pracht in einem Atemzug bewahrt hat, absolut angemessen erscheint. Wenn Sie planen, hineinzugehen, ist sie im Allgemeinen von Montag bis Samstag von acht Uhr morgens bis halb sechs Uhr abends geöffnet und am Sonntag geschlossen.