On your left stands one of Bastia’s quieter treasure houses: the Departmental Archives of Haute-Corse. These archives began in nineteen seventy-six, when the department itself came into being, and in nineteen ninety, architects Dominique Villa and Jean-Michel Battesti gave memory a proper home in this dedicated building. It belongs to the heritage service of the Collectivity of Corsica, though older locals may still remember its earlier life under the General Council of Haute-Corse.
What rests inside is not simply paperwork. It is the island’s paper heartbeat: official records, family traces, decisions, maps, and cadastre documents - the land register that shows who owned what, and where. Some of that can already be consulted online, while the inventories, catalogues, and the most requested collections continue their slow journey into digital form. A whole line of careful guardians has watched over it, from Marie-Claude Bartoli in the beginning to Pierre-Jean Campocasso today.
If you ever want to return, it opens on weekdays in morning and afternoon sessions, with a shorter Friday afternoon. When you are ready, continue on for the civic face of Bastia at the Hôtel de Ville.
