Centuri

The fishing port of Centuri on Cap Corse

Centuri is a village of about 200 people at the north-western tip of Cap Corse, and its harbour — Centuri-Port — is the prettiest small port in Corsica and its most serious lobster harbour.

It sits at the far end of the cape circuit, roughly opposite Bastia across the peninsula, and it is where most people stop for lunch.

The port

A dozen small boats, a breakwater of green serpentine stone, and a ring of houses with roofs of the same green schist. It is tiny — you can walk round it in ten minutes — and unusually intact, because there was never room to build anything larger.

The fleet still fishes, and what it lands is langouste — the spiny lobster. Centuri claims to be the leading lobster port in the Mediterranean, and while that is a large claim for a harbour this size, the restaurants on the quay do serve it straight off the boats. Season runs March to September.

The village above

A chapel at Centuri on Cap Corse

Centuri commune is a scatter of hamlets on the slope behind the port — Cannelle, Camera, Ortinola, Merlacce — linked by lanes and stepped paths. Cannelle in particular, reached on foot through fig trees, is worth the climb: no cars, stone houses, and a view down the whole west coast.

Above the port stand the ruins of the Château de Bettolacce and, on the shore, another of the Genoese towers that ring the island.

History

The Romans had a settlement here called Centurinum, and the harbour was in use throughout the Middle Ages. In 1761 Pasquale Paoli’s Corsican republic used Centuri as a naval base against Genoa — briefly, this was the harbour of an independent Corsica.

Getting there

  • By car — the D80 round the cape; about 1 h 15 from Bastia either way round, and 50 minutes from Saint-Florent. The road down to the port is narrow. See parking in France.
  • Parking — small and full by midday in summer; there is more space up on the main road.
  • By bus — very limited. This is a car trip.

Around

  • Moulin Mattei — the restored windmill on the ridge 10 minutes away, with the best view on the cape: both coasts at once, and the island of Giraglia off the point
  • Barcaggio and Tollare — the northernmost hamlets of Corsica, with a beach where cattle sometimes stand in the sand
  • Nonza — down the west coast, with its black beach and tower on the cliff
  • Erbalunga — on the eastern shore, the other village worth stopping for

When to go

May, June and September. The lobster is at its best early in the season; August fills the quay and the single road. Out of season several of the restaurants close, and the port is empty in a way that is either wonderful or bleak depending on the weather.

See Corsica and the Cap Corse circuit.

Photo credits

Photographs on this page come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences:

Nearby

Other places on this site within easy reach, as the crow flies:

Weather in Centuri

+17°nowpartly cloudywind 12 m/s
Forecast — Norwegian Meteorological Institute, CC BY 4.0.

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