King of Aragon's Staircase

The King of Aragon's Staircase (French: Escalier du roi d'Aragon; Corsican: Scali di u rè d'Aragona) is a staircase carved into the limestone cliff off Bonifacio on the French island of Corsica.

[2] Its name comes from a legend that it was ordered to be built by King Alfonso V of Aragon during his invasion of Corsica in 1420, ostensibly in a single night.

It was actually built by Franciscan monks in order to reach drinking water from a well at the bottom.

The Alfonso legend was discarded due to the sheer impossibility of building the staircase in one night, as well as the presence of Genoese guard towers nearby.

The 12-metre gap between the last step and the sea also discounts this hypothesis, as well as another one putting forward that it was built for evacuation.