Start on the mountain and do not stop there. The historic centre, on the shoulder of Mount Titano, is the walled town everybody comes for: Piazza della Libertà and the Palazzo Pubblico, the Basilica del Santo, the State Museum, and the ridge walk from Guaita along the Passo delle Streghe to Cesta with the Adriatic below. Half a day covers it properly, and it is packed between eleven and four. Borgo Maggiore, at the bottom of the cable car, is where the mountain meets ordinary life, and it is a two-minute ride or a steep walk down. The northern plain is the working republic: Serravalle holds more people than any other castello and its district of Dogana is the biggest town in the country, which is where you go for a stadium, an outlet and a normal weekday. The southern hills, Fiorentino, Montegiardino and Chiesanuova, are vines, wheat and stone farmhouses with the towers on the skyline behind you, and they are the half almost no day tripper sees. Faetano in the east and Acquaviva in the west close the circle. One night turns a day trip into a trip: the centre empties at six, and the evening up there is the reason to stay.
1 San Marino city guide
Fun fact
San Marino has replaced its head of state every six months since at least 1243, and it has two of them at a time. The Captains Regent are sworn in on 1 April and 1 October each year, serve a single six-month term and are drawn from opposing sides so that neither can govern alone, which is the oldest system of government still running anywhere. The rules they work under are almost as old: the Leges Statutae Republicae Sancti Marini of 1600, six books in Latin codifying practice that had been forming since the thirteenth century, are still in force and are the oldest written governing document of any sovereign state. A country of 34,042 people has therefore been changing government twice a year, on schedule, for longer than most of the states around it have existed.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityThe souvenir stalls on the way up to Guaita earn that reputation and they are perhaps four streets of it. Behind them is a sovereign state that runs its own courts, mints its own euro coins, issues its own stamps, fields its own football team and has sat in the United Nations since 2 March 1992. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre and Mount Titano in 2008 for a fortified capital that has functioned continuously since the thirteenth century, which is a different claim from a pretty view. The crossbow bolts and the plastic swords are real too. Both things are true at once.
The realityIt has never been part of Italy and was independent for centuries before Italy existed as a state. There are no border controls, which is what creates the impression, and almost everything else is separate: a distinct constitution, a distinct legal system, its own police, its own postal service, its own dialling code at +378, and a head of state that changes twice a year. It sits outside the European Union and outside the Schengen area while using the euro under a monetary agreement, and it levies a single-stage import tax rather than VAT.
The realityA day is enough for the walled town, which is exactly why most visitors leave believing that is the country. The centre runs on coach hours: it fills after eleven, peaks in the middle of the afternoon and is quiet again by six. Stay one night and you get the walls at dusk with nobody on them, the towers before the first bus, and a morning free for the castelli on the plain and in the southern hills, which is where the vines, the farmhouses and the actual republic are.
The realitySome do, and it is a small part of the map. Electronics, perfume and clothing are cheaper here than across the border because the tax structure is different, and the outlet at Falciano on the plain is built around that. It is also not where anyone remembers going. The mountain, the towers, the ridge walk and the view down to Rimini and the Adriatic are what people describe afterwards, and none of them cost anything.
The realityThere is no border post and nobody checks anything: you drive or ride in from Italy past a sign. The stamp people talk about is a souvenir, sold over the counter at the tourist office in the historic centre, and it has no legal standing whatsoever. The genuine catch is the other way round. Because Italy is the only way in, a traveller who needs a Schengen visa to enter Italy needs one to stand in San Marino.
How to behave
- Open in Italian. Buongiorno on the way in, arrivederci on the way out. English is answered readily in the centre and much less so in the castelli, and starting in Italian is noticed for the right reasons.
- The castello is the unit people identify with. Someone from Faetano is from Faetano before they are from San Marino, each of the nine runs its own council, and the rivalry is friendly, constant and very much alive at the Palio.
- Sammarinese, not Italian, and the distinction matters more here than its size suggests. Do not congratulate anyone on their Italian citizenship or assume the euro in their pocket means membership of anything.
- Lunch is a real meal and it is eaten at a real hour, roughly one to half past two, after which kitchens in the smaller castelli close until evening. Plan the drive around it rather than expecting to eat at four.
- The centre is a working town and not a set. People live behind the shopfronts on the Contrada del Pianello, the Palazzo Pubblico is a functioning seat of government, and the guard outside it is doing a job.
Famous Sammarinese faces
Alessandra Perilli
Manuel Poggiali
Massimo Bonini
Alex de Angelis
Myles Amine
Gian Marco Berti
Valentina Monetta
Little Tony
Antonio Onofri
Maria Lea Pedini-Angelini
Mirko Tomassoni
Saint Marinus
Must-try Sammarinese food
Piadina
The oldest and most widespread thing on a Sammarinese table. Flour, water, lard and salt, rolled thin and cooked on a hot plate, then folded around prosciutto, squacquerone and rocket. Eaten standing up, at any hour.
Nidi di rondine
Swallow's nests: lasagne sheets spread with béchamel, cheese and prosciutto, rolled, cut into short cylinders, stood up in a dish of tomato sauce and baked until the tops catch. The Sunday first course.
Pasta e ceci
Chickpeas and short pasta simmered slowly with garlic, rosemary and olive oil until the broth thickens. Christmas Eve food that turns up on menus all winter.
Erbazzone
A flat baked pie of spinach or chard with cheese and onion. It travels well, which is why it turns up cold on a walking day as often as hot at a table.
Fagioli con le cotiche
Beans stewed with pork rind in tomato until the rind goes soft and the pot goes sticky. Peasant cooking, traditionally Christmas, and the plate that most rewards a cold day on the mountain.
Coniglio in porchetta
Rabbit boned out, stuffed with rosemary, wild fennel and garlic, rolled and roasted slowly. The name borrows the method from suckling pig; the meat stays lean.
Torta Tre Monti
The souvenir everyone leaves with. Layers of thin crisp wafer set with cocoa and hazelnut cream under dark chocolate, built up into the triple profile of Titano and its three peaks.
Bustrengo
The winter cake, and pure thrift: stale bread and cornmeal soaked and bound with eggs, honey, raisins, dried figs and lemon zest, then baked dense. Christmas food that keeps for days.
Cacciatello
Milk, eggs and sugar baked into something close to a crème caramel, plainer and less sweet than the version across the border. The everyday dessert.
Zuppa di ciliegie
Cherries cooked down in sweet red wine and spooned over toasted bread, sometimes over ice cream. Barely a soup, entirely a dessert, and worth ordering in early summer when the fruit is local.
Sangiovese di San Marino
The red the country grows, from the same grape as the Romagna hills around it and bottled by the single consortium that makes all Sammarinese wine. Ask for the mark of origin: it is what separates it from the Italian bottle beside it.
Biancale
The everyday white, dry and sharp, drunk cold with piadina and whatever came out of the Adriatic that morning. Ribolla and Roncale sit alongside it on a Sammarinese list.
Moscato Spumante Dolce
The sweet sparkling wine that closes a Sammarinese meal, poured with the Torta Tre Monti more often than not.
Tilus
A dark bitter liqueur made with truffle and herbs, drunk as a digestif after dinner or cut with water in summer. It tastes exactly as strange as it sounds and is the most local thing you can order.