We came into Ajaccio anchorage primarily for shelter, and the forecast kept us here longer than we expected. Ajaccio itself is just another town (and the largest we've seen since leaving Ostia), though it has a sweet old centre. From a cruiser perspective it has several strong points: good holding and shelter, a huge Carrefour five minutes from where you tie up the dinghy plus several excellent hardware shops and chandleries. All much more interesting to us, we have to admit, than the cult of Napoleon.
The main anchorage on the chart is actually pretty small. It is bounded to the west by yellow buoys which appear to mark the commercial jetty, and almost certainly now show very foul ground. To the west of this is now full of mooring bouys. On the other side of this anchorage, there are four large white buoys, joined by ropes and ominously marked 'GAZ'. You can however anchor east of these four buoys, which is further from town, but perfectly ok. Alternatively, anchor north of the ferry quays but south of the mooring field: the water here is deeper and you will feel more wash from the ships.
The main dinghy dock is a hard stone quay beside a campervan park at the northern end of the bay. It has a couple of metal rings in the wall. (You can ignore the pile of fishing net - it's obviously been dumped and now has plants growing on it!) We put down a grapnel anchor to hold us off, but then completely failed to get it up again. Even Mike, two other blokes and a 15hp engine failed to shift it. So we have buoyed it and left it as a hold-off marker for dinghies: our present to cruisers visiting Ajaccio.