Citadel of Bastia

En un regard

Le château en bref

The citadel of Bastia, the oldest historic quarter of the town, also known as Terra Nova, was founded in the 1380s by the Genoese governor Leonello Lomellini, who had the Castello della Bastia built there. In 1475, the podestà Antonio Tagliacarne had some twenty houses built around the fortress, founding the quarter in contrast to Terra Vechja, today's Old Port. The first fortifications date from 1480; the ramparts, organised into six bastions, were entirely rebuilt between 1575 and 1626. The citadel is home to the Governors' Palace (1448 – first quarter of the 16th century), the residence of the Genoese governors which later became a court of justice and then a prison, and whose façades and roofs have been listed as a historic monument since 1977; the Baroque Cathedral of Sainte-Marie, built from 1604 onwards (façade remodelled in the 19th century in the Neoclassical style); and the Oratory of Sainte-Croix (1600), which houses the famous Black Christ discovered in 1428. The Governors' Palace now hosts a museum of Corsican ethnography, while the town's Heritage Department occupies the Palace of the Noble Twelve; the quarter, rehabilitated with bilingual Corsican-French signage since 2014, remains a major tourist site in Bastia.