At the heart of “Pater Mateos”, a marine breeze touches the rocks licked by sea foam, cooling the hot air after a mountain hike on a bright summer afternoon. Under the oak trees, whiffs of sacred incense float, sweetened by rosewood and musk.
The “Pater Mateos” scent starts its journey along a stream, in the middle of a rocky path. It draws a mystical pilgrimage, going up the acid-green, burnt pink hills through impenetrable scrub, admiring the mountain’s rushing streams, before crossing the two stone bridges towards the wooden sign at the crossroads. The air is filled with the powerful scent of lemons and huge citrons, peppered with bergamot. Since the dawn of time, people have been meeting on this hilltop, where greenery pervades everything, a mix of heather, arbutus and wild flowers. We are in the middle of the Nebbio country, the Lourinion drawn on a map by Greek geographer and astrologer Ptolemy from Alexandria.
In this place, granite mountains dive into the Ligurian Sea, its blue fading to pastel in the faraway bay. At the end of the path, the sacred and the profane emerge: San Michele di Muratu, where the union of musk and rosewood is celebrated, carried by whirls of centuries-old incense. Legend has it that the church was built in one night by angels. Novelist Prosper Mérimée was mesmerized by its singular beauty and wrote about this 12th-century Pisan Romanesque church. On its façade, hard-green serpentine and the pale light of limestone associate in innumerable geometrical patterns and stripes. Absolute green mingles with the bright light of citrusses. And for eternity, an eerie celebration is unfolding on the dark stone of its bas-reliefs and modillions, where naive heroes and chimera appear to be sculpted from the smoke of myrrh.
"The far-off perfume of the maquis would be enough for me to recognize Corsica with my eyes closed."
Napoléon Bonaparte
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