On St Helena, as he lay dying Napoleon remembered the church of his childhood: 'If they forbid my corpse, as they have forbidden my body, a small piece of land in which to be laid, I desire to be buried with my ancestors in Ajaccio cathedral in Corsica'. This quotation, engraved on a marble plaque at the entrance to the cathedral, shows how important the place was to Napoleon during his life.

The Bonaparte family home in Ajaccio was a large four-storey building that proved comfortable for Napoleon his brothers and sisters. All, but Joseph, were born on the first floor of the house.
In 1793, the family members left Corsica because of their pro-French political leanings and it wasn't until 1797 that his mother Letitzia returned.
The house has been enlarged and refurbished several times in its history and is now a museum.

Place de Gaulle (otherwise known as place du Diamant, after the Diamanti family who once owned much of the property in Ajaccio) is the most useful point of orientation, even if it's not much to look at – just a windy concrete platform surrounded by a shopping complex. The only noteworthy thing on the square is the huge, bronze equestrian statue, a pompous lump commissioned by Napoléon III in 1865 showing the first Napoléon in Roman attire, surrounded by his four brothers.

Once the site of the town's medieval gate, place Foch lies at the heart of old Ajaccio. A delightfully shady square sloping down to the sea and lined with cafés and restaurants, it gets its local name – place des Palmiers – from the row of palms bordering the central strip. Dominating the top end, a fountain of four marble lions provides a mount for the inevitable statue of Napoléon, this one by Ajaccien sculptor Maglioli.