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.
