L'Île-Rousse

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Administration
Commune of L'Île-Rousse The train station of L'Île-Rousse
Location
Longitude	08° 56' 17" E
Latitude	42° 38' 08" N
Country	France
Région	Corse
Département	Haute-Corse
Arrondissement	Calvi
Canton	L'Île-Rousse
Statistics
Altitude	0 m–151 m (avg. 15 m)
Land area¹	2.5 km²
Population² (1999)	2,774
- Density (1999)	1,109/km²
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	2B134/ 20220
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq. mi. or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel).

L'Île-Rousse (Isula Rossa in Corsican) is a commune of Haute-Corse, Corsica, France. Permanent population: 2500.

Statue of Paoli, Île Rousse

It was founded in 1758 by Pasquale Paoli to create a port that would not be in the hands of the Genoese like Calvi. Italian being still the administrative language of Corsica (until 1848), the town was originally called Isola Rossa (Red Island, from the ochre colour of a rocky islet that served as a natural harbour).

With Saint-Florent, it is one of only two communes in the département to have a French name — all the others have kept their Italian names despite the repeated demands of Corsican nationalists.

1 History
2 Description
3 Personalities
4 External links

[edit] History

Inhabited since very ancient times (3 - 5 000 years BC), l'Île-Rousse was 1 000 BC a small, prosperous town dependant on Tyre in Phoenicia, called Agilla. Destroyed by the Phonecian fleet of Calaris (Galeria), Agilla come under Roman rule as Rubico Rocega (red rock) until the 4th century. Being so close to the sea, it was threatened by pirates and other potential enemies, and was not inhabited for several centuries except for fishermen and peasants who lived on the products of the sea and eart around the villages of Santa Reparata and Monticello.

In the 17th century, merchants from Santa Reparata established shops to trade by sea with the coastal villages of the Balagne, Nebbio, and the west of the Cap Corse. About 1759, Pascal Paoli, who often came to Balagne, decided to equip Corsica with a port in the north west of the island to try to cut the sea traffic between Genoa and Calvi. His plans prepared, he persuaded the Balagne government, sitting in Algajola], to authorise him to create a fort protecting the port (the Scalu) on 10 Decemner 1765.

L’Île-Rousse was born from this decision.

[edit] Description

Built on a bay bounded to the north west by the rocky islets of red porphyry which give it its name, and to the south by an immaculate white sand beach, l’Île-Rousse is presented to the tourist in all its beauty, extending westwards from the sea to the hill of the Sémaphore and the col de Fogata.

The old town of Pascal Paoli, le Père de la Patrie (the Father of the Fatherland), is made up of paved streets, almost rectilinear and oriented north-south. From the quays of the commercial port installed on 3 of the 6 small islands, the fishing port and the bridges which link the harbour complex to the coast and the market with its twenty one columns, the fortifications and the houses of the old city grew over the years, from 1765 into the first half of the 19th century.

Certain houses with their interior Florentine staircases are remarkable. The first church built in 1740 and destroyed in 1936 gave its name to the rue Notre-Dame. The church dedicated to Notre Dame de Miséricorde is next to an old Franciscan convent, while the parish church of l’Île-Rousse, the Immaculée Conception de Marie, is on the west of the main square, with its enormous date palms (planted 1890) in the shade of which it is good to play a game of petanque.

The new town blends harmoniously with the old at the place Paoli, shaded by hundred year old plane trees, where it is good to take the summer air. The old town offers visitors the chance to stroll on the old paving stones, partly restored, along streets with historic names: Pascal Paoli, Napoleon, les freres Arena (Arena brothers), Luois Philippe, Agilla..

Built by Pascal Paoli, equipped by its municipal officials, after 1815 with a blazon decorated with the royal lily of France and run for than a half-century by elected Bonapartist officials, l’Île-Rousse is a town with a share in the history of Corsica. Its contradictions make it an attractive and unexpected place for the tourists who come each year to sit down under the plane trees of its beautiful central square.