France Guide
Corsica
Musée Fesch
Address: Halfway along rue Cardinal-Fesch
Opening time: July & Aug Mon 1.30–6pm, Tues– Thurs 9am–6.30pm, Fri & Sat 10.30am–12.15pm, Sun 10.30am–6pm; Sept– June Mon 1–5.15pm, Tues– Sun 9.15am–12.15pm & 2.15–5.15pm
Ajaccio's best gallery is the the Musée Fesch ; €5.35. Cardinal Joseph Fesch was Napoleon's step-uncle and bishop of Lyon, and he used his lucrative position to invest in large numbers of paintings, many of them looted by the French armies in Holland, Italy and Germany. His bequest to the town includes seventeenth-century French and Spanish masters, but it's the Italian paintings that are the chief attraction: Raphael, Titian, Bellini, Veronese and Botticelli all have a place here.
You'll need a separate ticket for the Chapelle Impériale (same hours; €1.50), which stands across the courtyard from the museum. With its gloomy monochrome interior the chapel itself is unremarkable, and its interest lies in the crypt, where various members of the Bonaparte family are buried. It was the cardinal's dying wish that all the Bonaparte family be brought together under one roof, so the chapel was built in 1857 and the bodies – all except Napoleon's – subsequently ferried in.