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Corsica
This island of extraordinary beauty belongs to France but in large parts still resists becoming French.
The island has been settled since about 6000 BC and since then always has been prey for other Mediterranean people. Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines and Lombards succeeded in conquering and losing the island over the decades until Genoa took over in the 13th century. They kept the island for a few centuries but were constantly struggling with Corsicans fighting to become finally masters of their home after all these centuries of occupation.
The locals even managed to proclaim their own kingdom but this lasted only a year, before the Genoese took over again. But these eventually got tired of the enduring fighting and sold the island to the French in 1767. So the Corsicans, who always had their own identity and always felt that they should be their own masters, had a new occupier to fight. And so they did, again with little success but without ever giving up. For long periods it was not completely safe to visit certain parts of the island but things have calmed down a bit due to a mixture of a fairly strong autonomy of then island and a constant influx of French money.
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