Corsica Road Trip: Ajaccio to Bonifacio (3 Days)

Corsica is a mountain range that happens to be in the Mediterranean, and it drives like one. 312 kilometres from Ajaccio to Bonifacio takes three days because the roads are second-gear roads — and one eleven-kilometre stretch of them is among the finest in Europe.

Day 1 — Ajaccio to Porto through the Calanques (81 km)

North out of Ajaccio, Napoleon’s birthplace and the island’s biggest town, onto a coast road that stops pretending to be a main road within twenty minutes.

The Calanques de Piana are the reason for the day: red granite eroded into towers and arches, dropping straight into the sea, on the UNESCO list. The D81 through them is the only road there is — 11 kilometres, paved, and in places narrow enough that two cars pass by agreement.

Do not stop on it. There is no verge and no lay-by; a parked car blocks the whole road, and in July and August the queue behind it will be long. Park in Piana or Porto at either end and walk back to the viewpoints.

Day 2 — Over the spine to Corte (85 km)

Inland and up. The road climbs out of Porto through the Spelunca gorge and over passes into the middle of the island, where the tourism stops and the granite villages start.

Corte sits under a citadel on a rock, was the capital of independent Corsica in the eighteenth century, and still has the university that came with it. It is the least coastal place on the island and the most Corsican.

Day 3 — Down the east to Bonifacio (146 km)

The long day and the fastest road of the three, down the eastern plain and then across to the southern tip.

Bonifacio is built on a limestone cliff that the sea has undercut, so the old town leans out over its own harbour with Sardinia visible across the strait — twelve kilometres away, which is the width of the water this drive has been aiming at.

No tolls, and no autoroute to charge for

France runs péage on its autoroutes, and mainland routes on this site say so — the A10 to the Loire, the A8 down to Nice. Corsica has no autoroute at all. The island’s spine is the T20 and the rest are D-roads, and none of them has a booth.

What Corsica charges you instead is time. Average speeds here are far lower than the map suggests, and 150 kilometres is a half-day, not ninety minutes.

Getting the car here

Ajaccio, Bastia, Calvi and Figari all have airports, so renting on the island is straightforward. Bringing your own means a ferry from Marseille, Toulon or Nice — or from Italy, Livorno and Savona to Bastia, which is the shorter crossing.

What it costs

Use the cost calculator to price fuel and nights for your exact dates. With no tolls, the variable costs are fuel, beds and the boat to Scandola from Porto if you take it — the reserve is closed to cars and reachable only from the water.