Gulf of Porto: Scandola and Calanche of Piana

The Gulf of Porto was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1983 and was France's first natural property. It comprises the Corsican group formed by the Gulf of Porto, the Calanche de Piana, the Girolata peninsula and the Scandola nature reserve, on the western coast of the island.

The landscape is defined by the rock: red volcanic porphyry eroded by wind and sea into spires, arches, caves and columns in reddish and orange tones that drop straight into transparent water. The Calanche de Piana are the most celebrated example of that morphology, with formations to which local tradition has given names for their resemblance to figures.

The Scandola reserve, created in 1975, protects both the land and the sea and was one of the first mixed reserves in the Mediterranean. Its seabed preserves Posidonia meadows, coralligenous habitat and sea fans, and its cliffs hold one of the Mediterranean populations of osprey, a species that came to the brink of extinction in Corsica and that recovered thanks to this protection. In recent years IUCN and UNESCO have expressed concern about the state of conservation of the property, because of pressure from recreational boating, anchoring over seagrass meadows and the degradation of benthic communities.