Torra di Senetosa
The Tower of Senetosa is a Genoese tower located in the commune of Sartène on the west coast of the Corsica. The tower sits at an elevation of 129 m on the Capu di Senetosa headland; the tower was built in 1610. It was one of a series of coastal defences constructed by the Republic of Genoa between 1530 and 1620 to stem the attacks by Barbary pirates. In 1992 the tower was listed as one of the official historical monuments of France. Since 1979 the tower has been owned and maintained by the French government agency, the Conservatoire du littoral; the agency plans to purchase 2,378 ha of the headland and as of 2011 had acquired 2,333 ha. List of Genoese towers in Mathieu. "Les Tours Génoises Corses". Includes information on how to reach 90 towers and many photographs
Alata, Corse-du-Sud
Alata is a commune in the Corse-du-Sud department in the Corsica region of France. It is within the metropolitan area of the capital Ajaccio; the inhabitants of the commune are known as Alatais or'Alataises Alata is 7 km north of the city of Ajaccio and the village is at an altitude of 400m. Alata borders the sea in the Gulf of Lava, in the Gulf of Sagone; the geographic boundaries of the town are between the Monte Gozzi, the Gulf of Lava, La Punta - Pozzo di Borgo, Villanova and Afa with its 3250 hectares of scrub and large forests of oak. The commune can be accessed on road D61 north from Ajaccio; the D61 continues through the commune to the north and joins road D81. The D261 road branches west off the coast west of the commune; the D461 road turns east from the D61 in the commune to access the village of Alata where it terminates. The D81 road traverses the east side of the commune and accesses some of the villages there which have no direct connection with the village of Alata; the coastal portion of the commune is accessed by mountain roads leading off the D61.
Other than Alata village there are a number of other villages in the commune. These are: There are some built-up areas which have no names; the first village was settled close to the Monticchi towers defense post and watchtower, now in ruins but still visible above the present village. Alata has been the seat of the Pozzo di Borgo family since the 16th century. List of Successive Mayors of Alata Farming and production of Corsican specialties a hotel in the village a large holiday resort located on the sea coast The Château de la punta is registered as an historical monument. Located 600 m above sea level, the chateau offers a panoramic view of Ajaccio up to the entrance of the Gulf of Porto over the surrounding mountains and over Monte Cinto, the highest mountain in Corsica. A replication of one of the pavilions of the Tuileries Palace in Paris that burned down in 1871. When, in 1882, it was decided to destroy the Palace in Paris, Jerome Pozzo di Borgo, a great enemy of Napoleon I, acquired a large number of the stones to build a house on the family estate located on the heights of Ajaccio to show his supremacy.
The reconstruction of the castle took place from 1886 to 1894. The castle was burned on 7 August 1978 by a bush fire which spread to the roof causing serious damage. In 1991 the General Council of South Corsica decided on the acquisition of the Château de la Punta and its area of 40 hectares from the Pozzo di Borgo family; the repair of the roof was completed in 1996 making the castle safe from further damage due to rain. The castle is not yet saved however; the Golfe de Lava is a beautiful Gulf with a holiday village in the commune of Alata where, in 1985, three pieces of Roman gold were found by three fishermen. This was the starting point of a fabulous treasure hunt; the many items found. The commune has one religious building, registered as an historical monument: The Pozzo di Borgo Funeral Chapel; the Parish Church of Saint-Peter and Saint Paul contains a Tabernacle, registered as an historical object: The Parish Church of Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens contains a Tabernacle, registered as an historical object: Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo Jean-Laurent Albertini, a painter from Albertacce.
Communes of the Corse-du-Sud department Alata official website Friends of the Château de la Punta website Alata on Lion1906 Alata on Google Maps Alata on Géoportail, National Geographic Institute website Alata on the INSEE website INSEE
Departments of France
In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, five are overseas departments, which are classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils; each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school buildings and technical staff, local roads and school and rural buses, a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; the departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity.
All of them were named after physical geographical features, rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The division of France into departments was a project identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès, although it had been discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers; the earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of d'Argenson. They have inspired similar divisions in some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the "Official Geographical Code", allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. Overseas departments have a three-digit number; the number is used, for example, in the postal code, was until used for all vehicle registration plates. While residents use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, more distant departments are referred to by their names, as few people know the numbers of all the departments.
For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as "the 45". In 2014, President François Hollande proposed to abolish departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, to transfer their powers to other levels of governance; this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution, France gained territory through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved in order to weaken old loyalties; the modern departments, as all-purpose units of the government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure.
Their boundaries served two purposes: Boundaries were chosen to break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation. Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of a department; this was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas far from any centre of government; the old nomenclature was avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after other physical features. Paris was in the department of Seine. Savoy became the department of Mont-Blanc; the number of departments 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86.
In 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department; the 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin became known as the Territoire de Belfort; when France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department; the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, a new Moselle department was created in the regaine
Ajaccio
Ajaccio is a French commune, prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud, head office of the Collectivité territoriale de Corse. It is the largest settlement on the island. Ajaccio is located on the west coast of the island of Corsica, 210 nautical miles southeast of Marseille; the original city went into decline in the Middle Ages, but began to prosper again after the Genoese built a citadel in 1492 to the south of the earlier settlement. After the Corsican Republic was declared in 1755 the Genoese continued to hold several citadels, including Ajaccio, until the French took control of the island; the inhabitants of the commune are known as Ajacciennes. The most famous of these is Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Ajaccio in 1769, whose ancestral home, the Maison Bonaparte, is now a museum. Other dedications to him in the city include Ajaccio Napoleon Bonaparte Airport. Ajaccio is located on the west coast of the island of Corsica, 210 nautical miles southeast of Marseille; the commune occupies a sheltered position at the foot of wooded hills on the northern shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio between Gravona and the pointe de la Parata and includes the îles Sanguinaires.
The harbour lies to the east of the original citadel below a hill overlooking a peninsula which protects the harbour in the south where the Quai de la Citadelle and the Jettée de la Citadelle are. The modern city not only encloses the entire harbour but takes up the better part of the Gulf of Ajaccio and in suburban form extends for some miles up the valley of the Gravona River; the flow from that river is nearly consumed as the city's water supply. Many beaches and coves border its territory and the terrain is rugged in the west where the highest point is 790 m. Although the commune of Ajaccio has a large area, only a small portion of this is urbanized. Therefore, the urban area of Ajaccio is located in the east of the commune on a narrow coastal strip forming a densely populated arc; the rest of the territory is natural with habitation of little spread thinly. Suburbanization occurs east of the main urban area; the original urban core, close to the old marshy plain of Cannes was abandoned in favour of the current city, built near the Punta della Lechia.
It has undergone various improvements under Napoleon, who originated the two current major structural arteries. Ajaccio experienced a demographic boom in the 1960s, which explains why 85% of dwellings are post-1949; this is reflected in the layout of the city, marked by large areas of low-rise buildings and concrete towers on the heights and in the north of the city - e.g. the waterfront, Les Cannes, Les Salines. A dichotomy appears in the landscape between the imposing modern buildings. Ajaccio gives the image of a city built on two different levels; the city has a Mediterranean climate, Csa in the Köppen climate classification. The average annual sunshine is 2726 hours. There are important local climatic variations with wind exposure and total precipitation, between the city centre, the airport, the îles Sanguinaires; the annual average rainfall is 645.6 mm at the Campo dell'Oro weather station and 523.9 mm at the Parata: the third-driest place in metropolitan France. The heat and dryness of summer are somewhat tempered by the proximity of the Mediterranean Sea except when the sirocco is blowing.
In autumn and spring, heavy rain-storm episodes may occur. Winters are mild and snow is rare. Ajaccio is the French city which holds the record for the number of thunderstorms in the reference period 1971-2000 with an average of 39 thunderstorm days per year. On 14 September 2009, the city was hit by a tornado with an intensity of F1 on the Fujita scale. There was little damage except torn billboards, flying tiles, overturned cars, broken windows but no casualties. Weather Data for Ajaccio Several hypotheses have been advanced as to the etymology of the name Ajaccio. Among these, the most prestigious suggests that the city was founded by the Greek legendary hero Ajax and named after him. Other more realistic explanations are, for example, that the name could be related to the Tuscan agghiacciu meaning "sheep pens". Another explanation, supported by Byzantine sources from around the year 600AD called the city Agiation which suggests a possible Greek origin for the word, agathè could mean "good luck" or "good mooring".
The city was not mentioned by the Greek geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria in the 2nd century AD despite the presence of a place called Ourkinion in the Cinarca area. It is that the city of Ajaccio had its first development at this time; the 2nd century was a period of prosperity in the Mediterranean basin and there was a need for a proper port at the head of the several valleys that lead to the Gulf able to accommodate large ships. Some important underwater archaeological discoveries made of Roman ships tend to confirm this. Further excavations conducted led to the discovery of important early Christian remains to a reevaluation upwards of the size of Ajaccio city in Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages; the city was in any case significant enough to be the seat of a diocese, mentioned by Pope Gregory the Great in 591. The city was further north than the location chosen by the Gen
Corse-du-Sud
Corse-du-Sud is a former department of France consisting of the southern part of the island of Corsica. It and the other Corsican department, Haute-Corse, decided to merge with each other and the single collectivity of Corsica effective 1 January 2018, coinciding with territorial elections The people living in Corse-du-Sud are called "Southerners"; the department was formed on 15 September 1975, when the single department of Corsica was divided into Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud. Its boundaries corresponded to the former department of Liamone, which existed from 1793 to 1811. On 6 February 1998, Corse-du-Sud's prefect Claude Érignac was assassinated in Ajaccio; the Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna was convicted of the crime. On 6 July 2003 a referendum rejected increased autonomy by a small majority, with 50.98 percent voting against and 49.02 percent for. This was a major setback for the French Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, who had hoped to use Corsica as the first step in his decentralization programme.
The department was surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea and on the north by the department of Haute-Corse. The entire island of Corsica is mountainous with many beautiful beaches; the former department enjoys the mild and hot climate of Mediterranean Islands, therefore attracts a lot of tourists. Its largest tourist attraction is the city of Bonifacio, part of, built upon a huge cliff, but inside mountains are beautiful as well the Aiguilles de Bavella, some naked, needle-like rocks. Cantons of the Corse-du-Sud department Communes of the Corse-du-Sud department Arrondissements of the Corse-du-Sud department General Council website Corse-du-Sud at Curlie University of Corsica website
Subprefectures in France
In France, a subprefecture is the administrative center of a departmental arrondissement that does not contain the prefecture for its department. The term applies to the building that houses the administrative headquarters for an arrondissement; the civil servant in charge of a subprefecture is the subprefect, assisted by a general secretary. Between May 1982 and February 1988, subprefects were known instead by the title commissaire adjoint de la République. Where the administration of an arrondissement is carried out from a prefecture, the general secretary to the prefect carries out duties equivalent to those of the subprefect; the municipal arrondissements of Paris and Marseille are divisions of the city rather than the prefecture, so are not arrondissements in the same sense. List of subprefectures of France List of arrondissements of France
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is located southeast of the French mainland and west of the Italian Peninsula, with the nearest land mass being the Italian island of Sardinia to the immediate south. A single chain of mountains makes up two-thirds of the island. While being part of Metropolitan France, Corsica is designated as a territorial collectivity by law; as a territorial collectivity, Corsica enjoys a greater degree of autonomy than other French regions. The island formed a single department until it was split in 1975 into two historical departments: Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud, with its regional capital in Ajaccio, the prefecture city of Corse-du-Sud. Bastia, the prefecture city of Haute-Corse, is the second largest settlement in Corsica; the two departments, the region of Corsica, merged again into a single territorial collectivity in 2018. After being ruled by the Republic of Genoa since 1284, Corsica was an Italian-speaking independent republic from 1755, until it was ceded by the Republic of Genoa to Louis XV as part of a pledge for debts and conquered in 1769.
Napoleon Bonaparte was born the same year in Ajaccio, his ancestral home, Maison Bonaparte, is today a significant visitor attraction and museum. Due to Corsica's historical ties with the Italian peninsula, the island retains to this day many Italian cultural elements: the native tongue is recognized as a regional language by the French government; the origin of the name Corsica remains a mystery. To the Ancient Greeks it was known as Kalliste, Cyrnos, Cernealis, or Cirné. Of these Cyrnos, Cernealis, or Cirné derive from the most ancient Greek name of the island, "Σειρηνούσσαι", the same Sirens mentioned in Homer's Odyssey. Corsica has been occupied continuously since the Mesolithic era, it acquired an indigenous population, influential in the Mediterranean during its long prehistory. After a brief occupation by the Carthaginians, colonization by the ancient Greeks, an only longer occupation by the Etruscans, it was incorporated by the Roman Republic at the end of the First Punic War and, with Sardinia, in 238 BC became a province of the Roman Republic.
The Romans, who built a colony in Aléria, considered Corsica as one of the most backward regions of the Roman world. The island produced sheep, honey and wax, exported many slaves, not well considered because of their fierce and rebellious character. Moreover, it was known for its cheap wines, exported to Rome, was used as a place of relegation, one of the most famous exiles being the Roman philosopher Seneca. Administratively, the island was divided in pagi, which in the Middle Ages became the pievi, the basic administrative units of the island until 1768. During the diffusion of Christianity, which arrived quite early from Rome and the Tuscan harbors, Corsica was home to many martyrs and saints: among them, the most important are Saint Devota and Saint Julia, both patrons of the island. Corsica was integrated into Roman Italy by Emperor Diocletian. In the 5th century, the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the island was invaded by the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. Recovered by the Byzantines, it soon became part of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
This made it a dependency of the March of Tuscany. Pepin the Short, king of the Franks and Charlemagne's father, expelled the Lombards and nominally granted Corsica to Pope Stephen II. In the first quarter of the 11th century and Genoa together freed the island from the threat of Arab invasion. After that, the island came under the influence of the republic of Pisa. To this period belong the many polychrome churches which adorn the island, Corsica experienced a massive immigration from Tuscany, which gave to the island its present toponymy and rendered the language spoken in the northern two-thirds of the island close to the Tuscan dialect. Due to that began the traditional division of Corsica in two parts, along the main chain of mountains going from Calvi to Porto-Vecchio: the eastern Banda di dentro, or Cismonte, more populated and open to the commerce with Italy, the western Banda di fuori, or Pomonte deserted and remote; the crushing defeat experienced by Pisa in 1284 in the Battle of Meloria against Genoa had among its consequences the end of the Pisan rule and the beginning of the Genoese influence in Corsica: this was contested by the King of Aragon, who in 1296 had received from the Pope the investiture over Sardinia and Corsica.
A popular revolution against this and the feudal lords, led by Sambucuccio d'Alando, got the aid of Genoa. After that, the Cismonte was ruled after the Italian experience; the following 150 years were a period of conflict, when the Genoese rule was contested by Aragon, the local lords, the comuni and the Pope: in 1450 Genoa ceded the administration of the island to its main bank, the Bank of Saint George, which brought peace. In the 16th century, the island entered into the fight between Spain and France for the supremacy in Italy. In 1553, a Franco-Ottoman fleet occupied Corsica, but the reaction of Spain and Genoa, led by Andrea Doria, reestablished the Genoese supremacy on the island, confirmed by the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis; the unlucky protagonist of this episode was Sampiero di Bastelica, who would come to be considered a hero of t
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