2 Best Sights in Corsica, France

One of four national historic museums dedicated to Napoléon, the multilevel house where the emperor was born on August 15, 1769, contains memorabilia and paintings of the extended Bonaparte family. History aficionados can tour bedrooms, dining rooms, and salons where Charles and Letitzia Bonaparte raised their eight children. Period furnishings and antiques in Corsican and Empire styles are scattered about and pay tribute to the family's bourgeois upbringing. Head downstairs to see the cellars and granite oil-pressing mill acquired by Napoléon III in 1860, which depict the importance of rural industry for the Bonapartes' income. Visit the trapdoor room and find the opening next to the door through which Napoléon allegedly escaped in 1799. The building itself changed hands multiple times through Bonaparte heirs until 1923, when it was donated to the state of France by Prince Victor, elder son of Prince Jérôme Napoléon.

This internationally recognized museum houses one of the most important collections from the Napoleonic era; it's undoubtedly one of the most significant displays in France of ancient Italian masterpieces spanning the 14th to 20th centuries. There are nearly 18,000 items, all part of an astounding inventory that belonged to Napoléon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch. Thanks to his nephew's military conquests, the cardinal was able to amass (steal, some would say) many celebrated old-master paintings, the most famous of which are now in Paris's Louvre. The museum's beautiful vaulted corridors showcase 700 paintings, portraits, still lifes, and sculptures from the First and Second Empire from the French school. Don't miss the gallery with engravings and drawings depicting historic Corsica. The building itself, constructed by the cardinal as the Institute of Arts and Sciences, dates back to 1837.