Musée Fesch

The Musée Fesch is the principal fine arts museum of Corsica, and its collection of Italian painting is one of the largest in France outside Paris. It is housed in the Palais Fesch, a handsome building of the early nineteenth century in the centre of Ajaccio, on the street that bears the name of its founder, Cardinal Joseph Fesch. The museum is an unexpected treasure on an island better known for its mountains and beaches, and it owes its existence to one family, the Bonapartes, whose members were born in Ajaccio and went on to rule much of Europe.

Cardinal Fesch was the half-brother of Letizia Bonaparte, the mother of Napoleon, and thus the uncle of the emperor. He was born in Ajaccio in 1763 and rose to be archbishop of Lyon and a cardinal under his nephew's rule. During the Napoleonic period and its aftermath, in Rome, where he lived in exile after 1815, he assembled a vast collection of paintings, drawing on the works that came onto the market in the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Empire, when many church and aristocratic collections were dispersed. The collection ran to many thousands of works, and he bequeathed part of it to his native city on condition that a museum would be built. The Palais Fesch, constructed between 1827 and 1837, was built to house it.

The collection is strongest in Italian art. The visit follows a chronological route, from the so-called Italian Primitives of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, including paintings of the schools of Florence, Venice, Rome and Naples. The museum holds works by artists of the first rank, among them Botticelli, whose Madonna and Child is one of its best-known pieces, and canvases attributed to Titian, Veronese and others. The galleries also show French painting, including works from the Napoleonic era, and a section is devoted to Corsican painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which gives a view of local art.

Next to the museum stands the Chapelle Impériale, built by Fesch as a burial place for the Bonaparte family, and its crypt contains the tombs of several members of the family, among them Napoleon's parents. The Maison Bonaparte, the house where Napoleon was born in 1769, is a short walk away, and the Citadelle d'Ajaccio, the market and the harbour make up a pleasant day in the town. The coast near Ajaccio has beaches, and the Sentier des Douaniers, a coastal path, offers walking along the shore of the gulf.

The museum suits art lovers and those interested in the Napoleonic story, and it is particularly welcome on a day of bad weather. A visit takes about two hours. Admission is charged, with reduced rates for certain visitors, and opening hours vary by season, with longer hours in summer, so check before you go. The museum is equipped for visitors with disabilities.