Calvi Hotels

Calvi is a city on the French island of Corsica and the biggest tourist centre of the island proper. Because of the Corsica's strategic location, Calvi has a rich and chequered history. The earliest found remains of settlers in Calvi date back to the Neolithic period, in one of its many caves. The first real recorded history of the settling of Calvi was around 1000BC, when the Romans brought agriculture to the land. Since then, Calvi has been invaded many times, giving rise to the popular often conquered, never enslaved. Until 1729, Calvi was part of the Genoese empire, leading to the legend that Christopher Columbus supposedly came from there (there is a large statue at the foot of the citadel that commemorates this legend). The anarchist uprising against the Genoese led by Pascal Paoli from 1729 to 1768, and the shortly independent Corsica as a whole, was not supported by Calvi, which retains a very cosmopolitan feel, as opposed to the strictly Corsican feel of the old capital Corte, even today. More like a glamorous mainland Mediterranean resort than perhaps anywhere else in Corsica, Calvi curves around a crescent-shaped bay, basking beneath the snowy peaks of Monte Cinto (2706m). Watching over the town, the citadel remains as a relic of the town's past as a strategic military outpost, with a huddle of 13th-century hilltop houses cosseted by 15th-century bastions. In 1794, a British expeditionary fleet assisting Pasquale Paoli's Corsican nationalist forces besieged and bombarded the Genoese stronghold. In the course of the battle, Captain Horatio Nelson was wounded by rock splinters and lost the use of his right eye.