Cargèse (French: [kaʁʒɛz]; Corsican: Carghjese [karˈɟɛzɛ] or Carghjesi [karˈɟɛzi]; Italian: Cargese [karˈdʒeːze, eːse]; Greek: Καργκέζε, romanized: Kargkéze) is a village and commune in the Corse-du-Sud department of France on the west coast of the island of Corsica, 27 km north of Ajaccio.

[3] The village was established at the end of the 18th century by the descendants of a group of immigrants from the Mani Peninsula of the Greek Peloponnese who had first settled in Corsica a hundred years earlier.

[4] This was mainly driven by the wish to escape from the control of the Ottoman Turks but was also prompted by the lack of arable land and by the intense feuding between different clans.

[a] A number of the inhabitants of the small town of Oitylo (or Vitylo), which lay just 1.5 km west of the fortress, wished to emigrate to avoid the taxation imposed by the Ottomans[6] and negotiated with the Republic of Genoa, which then controlled Corsica, for permission to settle on the island.

The Republic offered them a choice of three locations in the Province of Vico and in October 1675 a group of 730 colonists departed from Oitylo and after a short stay in Genoa arrived in Corsica on 14 March 1676.

[7] They settled in Paomia, the site of several abandoned hamlets,[b][9] which is situated 4 km east of the present village of Cargèse at around 450 m in altitude on a hillside overlooking the Gulf of Sagone.

The settlers agreed to pledge loyalty to Genoa and to recognise the spiritual authority of the Pope but were allowed to retain the Byzantine Rite as prescribed by the Holy See in Rome.

[14] The local Corsicans resented the Greek colonists occupying land that they considered to be rightfully theirs and this led to disputes between the two communities.

Finally in April 1731, 55 years after their arrival, the Greek colonists were forced to abandon Paomia and seek refuge in Ajaccio.

[21] The lack of Genoese protection made life very difficult for the colonists, particularly after 1745, and a number of groups chose to emigrate to Sardinia, Menorca and Florida (New Smyrna).

[24] The situation changed with the Treaty of Versaille in 1768 when the French gained control of the island and the governor, the Comte de Marbeuf, took a personal interest in the Greek colonists.

[29] In 1789 and in 1791, with the breakdown in civil order resulting from the French Revolution, Cargèse was subject to a series of attacks by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages.

The British withdrew from the island in the October of the following year, and almost immediately the inhabitants of Vico, Appriciani, Balogna, Letia and Renno attacked Cargèse.

In 1814, with the collapse of the First French Empire, the threat of violence forced the inhabitants of Cargèse to surrender some of their farmland to the surrounding hamlets.

Neighbouring villagers again threatened to attack Cargèse but the arrival of a detachment of soldiers from Ajaccio prevented serious bloodshed.

The historian Nick Nicholas has argued that the exceptionally long time that the colonists took to assimilate was a result of several factors including the substantial size of the colony, the large religious presence and the strong antagonism felt between the Corsicans and the settlers.

[38] The census of 1896 recorded 1216 inhabitants but in the first half of the 20th century many young people left the village to find employment in continental France.

The church on the east side was built by native Corsicans and descendants of the Greek colonists who had adopted the Latin liturgical rites.

A priest based in Athens, Archimandrite Armaos Athanasios, visits Cargèse several times a year to conduct services in the Greek church.

[51][52] The English artist and poet Edward Lear visited Cargèse in 1868 and noted "the large building which is so conspicuous in all the views of Carghèsè, and which they tell me is the new Greek church; it is a mere shell, standing unfinished for lack of funds".

[54] The iconostasis, the wooden partition separating the nave from the sanctuary, had been designed in 1881 for the Basilian monastery of Santa Maria in Grottaferrata near Rome but a liturgical argument prevented it from being installed and in 1886 it was offered instead to the Greek church in Cargèse.

[57] The final four were completed in 2001: the Last Judgement on the right of the entrance, the prophet Isaiah on the left of the entrance, three recent priests (Marchiano, Chappet, and Coti) climbing stairs, and finally a large fresco at the back of the church symbolising the history of the colony (the departure from Vitylo in 1675, seeking refuge in Ajaccio in 1731 and arriving in Cargèse in 1775).

The headlands and the adjacent coastline are protected as the land has been purchased by an agency of the French state, the Conservatoire du littoral.

The transhumance is still practised: animals are moved up to the mountains in May to graze at high altitude during the dry summer months and brought back in October to pastures near the village where they spend the winter.

An important target species is the red spiny lobster (Palinurus elephas, langouste in French) which can only be legally fished between 1 March and 30 September.

A scientific conference centre, the Institut d'Études Scientifiques de Cargèse, is located near the coast about 1.5 km east of the village.

The centre has a maximum capacity of 100 people, but as there is only limited accommodation within the conference complex, most attendees rent rooms or stay in hotels in the village.

There is a combined nursery and primary school in the village for children between the ages 3 and 11 (Groupe Scolaire, Rue du Colonel Fieschi).

The harbour is protected by a jetty running 200 m in a north-easterly direction and can accommodate 235 boats with a maximum length of 16 m.[74] There are 35 places allocated for visitors.

In good weather vessels can anchor east of the harbour entrance in water with a minimum depth of 6 m. The three Genoese towers in the commune were built between 1605 and 1606:[75][76]