The Calanques de Piana

After landing at Ajaccio with Air Corsica, and in just a few hours' drive, you will discover an outstanding UNESCO World Heritage site : the magnificent red Calanques de Piana majestically overlooking the Gulf of Porto.

Piana and the Gulf of Porto

The Calanques de Piana are located on the west coast of the island, halfway between Ajaccio and Calvi, on the Corsican seaside road. Traversed by several trails they are the delight of hikers with:

• the low path to the " Château Fort (Fortified Castle) "  including the long winding descent towards the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Gulf of Porto, in the middle of a chaos of stones.
• the high trail starting less than 200 metres to the west of " la Tête du Chien (the Head of the Dog) ", near the " Les Roches Bleues (the blue rocks) " bar, which re-joins the Cavallaghiu bridge and the Mezzanu bridge through the Roches Bleues and the Calanques ridge
• the old trail of " Piana à Ota " from the Santa Maria Oratory shortly after the " Roches Bleues " bar from Porto, in the middle of the Calanques crossing which re-joins the previous path.

For simple lovers of beautiful scenery and relaxing, this place is a real treat for the eyes as described by Guy De Maupassant in 1880 in his travelogue "The Monastery of Corbara  : " At nightfall, I crossed the Calanques de Piana. Stunned, I stopped in front of these astonishing pink granite rocks, four hundred metres high, strange, tortured, curved, eaten away by time, bloody under the last fires of sunset and taking on such forms as fairy tale characters, petrified by some supernatural power. And then I saw two gigantic monks bolt upright ; a sitting bishop, crook in hand, mitre on head ; of prodigious figures, a lion crouched at the edge of the road, a woman nursing her child and a head of an immense devil, horned, grimacing, guardian probably of this crowd imprisoned in stone bodies. After the Niolo which, without doubt, no-one will admire the stark and barren loneliness, the Calanques de Piana are one of the wonders of Corsica ; arguably, I think, one of the wonders of the world. "

Thanks to Air Corsica, these " wonders of the world and of Corsica" are within a wing's beat in just a few clicks and hardly a two-hour flight away !