Palais des Gouverneurs, Former palace and barracks in Bastia, France

The Palais des Gouverneurs is a fortress-palace in Bastia's Citadelle quarter, built around a central courtyard reached from the south. Its round tower and long four-storey wing show an ochre render over rough grey stone at ground level, with arched windows below smaller rectangular openings. A stone bell tower with two clocks and scroll ornaments tops the south facade, where two semicircular niches sit between pilasters.

In 1380 the Genoese governor Leonello Lomellini built a small fortification, the bastia, on a rocky promontory near the fishing harbour of Portu Cardu; this fort gave the city its name. In 1453 the Office of Saint George made it the governor's residence, and enlargement works ran from 1488 to 1521 under Andrea Spinola. After Corsica passed to France, the palace lost its governmental role and became a barracks in 1791, remaining so until 1948.

The building houses the Museum of Bastia, presenting collections that show how people lived and how the city was governed in past centuries. The exhibits focus on maritime connections and local administration that shaped the region.

The palace stands inside the Citadelle quarter, reached on foot through the old streets above the Vieux-Port. The museum occupies the building; the north-west corner was rebuilt in modern forms in 2011 after its destruction in the October 1943 Allied bombing. The courtyard, the cortile, is the central point around which the wings are organised, with access historically from the south.

Below the building lie fourteen historical prison cells and water cisterns that once supplied drinking water during medieval sieges. These underground spaces reveal how challenging it was to maintain a fortress in a coastal position.