An independent guide to one island's building stone

This site began as a set of field notes about watchtowers and turned into something wider once it became obvious that the towers and the villages behind them are the same problem solved twice. A tower is granite arranged for sight. A village is granite arranged for gravity and carry. Both are decided by what the rock will do and how far a man can move it.

Every entry is written from the building outward. Where a Corsican word is the right word — torra for a tower, aghja for a threshing floor — it is used and glossed once. Where there is no separate word, we say so rather than inventing one.

What this is not

It is not a tourism body, a heritage authority or a visitor service, and it carries no affiliation with any of them. It does not sell tours, tickets or accommodation. The businesses listed on the homepage pay for the fieldwork and the photography; they have no say in what the entries conclude.