A Small Post about a Tiny Country: San Marino

I confess the only reason I went to San Marino was to be able to add another country to my country’s visited count. We were driving around Italy and planning to stay in Ravenna, just an hour away from San Marino, so why not visit it.

San Marino is old; it’s the world’s oldest republic. It is also small, about 60 square kilometres. For reference, Toronto is nearly 650 square kilometres. It was founded by a former Croatian named Marino who was escaping the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s anti-Christian edicts. In 301AD, he founded the republic atop Mount Titano. When he was later made a saint, San Marino was renamed in his honour.

San Marino’s main attraction is its 3 towers, built between the 12th and 14th century either for defensive purposes or as prisons, no one is quite certain.

So why does it exist? It was one of a multitude of Italian city states that survived into the 19th century. Girabaldi, the statesman credited with unifying the many Italian city states into a single entity in the 1850’s was given refuge in San Marino from anti-unification forces. As a gesture of gratitude, he guaranteed San Marino’s independence. In 1862, Italy and San Marino signed a friendship treaty cementing its independence.

So it stands today, looming high above Italy on Mount Titano. Besides walking between the towers, which takes about 15 minutes, there’s not a lot to do. We visited the Crossbowman’s Quarry ( a 5 minute walk from the hotel) and the palace which serves as the seat of government ( another minute walk). We did pay €5 at the Coin Museum to get a San Marino stamp in our passport. We saw advertisements for a Vampire Museum, but passed on visiting it.

The country earns its income primarily from tourism with some banking and ceramic manufacturing as well. But its most obvious source of revenue, and this came as a big surprise to us, is from weapons’ sales. Apparently it has the most liberal gun laws in Europe:

Gun shops and sword shops sat side by side the souvenir stores and some nifty toy stores. We didn’t stop in the gun stores; we probably couldn’t bring them back to Canada.

And so ended about 20 hours in San Marino.