Going up the Cavone road, on the heights, you can see the ruins of the Castello de Covasina, also called Castello di Carlomagno. The castle of Covasina and its small chapel are monuments dating from the 9th century of Carolingian foundation. Recently consolidated, it offers a spectacular view of the plain.
This castle was the stronghold of a seigniory which was often involved in the Corsican wars. It would have been built on a very old and unknown model in the Mediterranean, following a mission in Corsica of the Mayençais lord Truffetta who is presented as an envoy of Charlemagne. He would have fought – according to the chronicler Gioavanni della Grossa – against one of the oldest seigniorial families of Corsica, the Biancolacci: Truffetta de Covasina had crossed the mountains during the war of the Biancolacci, and had made himself Lord of Talabo. It was he who built the castle of Pietrapola, he called it thus from the name of one of his sisters, Pola who occupied it.
Truffetta, dying left three sons: one had Covasina, the other Pietrapola, and the third Poggio di Nazza. The cut stone walls of the fortress rest on an infrastructure of larger blocks where Roman birks are inserted. The rock of Covasina may have already been a Roman oppidum in charge of the surveillance of the sea and the shore of the eastern plain in Roman times.
