There's A Tiny Country Inside Italy, And It's Not the Vatican.

Also, there's a virtual cappuccino in it for you if you can guess what it is!

Little wonder San Marino has managed to resist invasion all these centuries!

I’d already been living in Italy for about four years before discovering something that came as an enormous shock to me: I was about 253 kilometers away from an entirely different country, one surrounded by Italian territory.

At first, I was indignant. How had I not been apprised of the existence of said country? How long had it been there? It felt as though some enormous hoax had been perpetrated against me, and that my high school geography teacher had scandalously failed to do her job. What sort of people wanted to be a separate entity from Italy? The whole thing reeked of populist insurrection. I was suspicious and angry on Italy’s behalf, ready to march down there, at least in spirit, and tell them what a mistake they’d made.

Then I did a little research and realized I was wrong about … well, pretty much all of it.

The country I’m talking about is San Marino. Blink, and you’ll miss it.

San Marino is a twenty-four square mile mountainous region populated by 32,000 people. Established in 301, it is the world’s oldest republic and has managed to hold out against all attempts to invade it. Italy’s city-states unified, and still, the Most Serene Republic of San Marino stubbornly refused to join. They don’t even belong to the European Union.

Saint Marinus and a rag-tag band of Christians fleeing Roman persecution founded the city, and then negotiated later for more territory—land acquired through purchases and treaties as opposed to invasion, which may be the most non-Italian thing about it.

The hermit of Mount Titano: Saint Marinus

85% of the country’s tourism is Italian tourism (the rest being German and Russian), despite the fact that Italians view the Sammarinese as a bunch of conniving tax cheats. Like most micro-nations, San Marino has had to offer up generous “tax incentives” to foreign investors. These permissive tax laws tend to irritate those who are not in a position to take advantage of them.

In 2009, after the Global Economic Recession, in desperate need of cash, Italy offered amnesty to citizens who might have illegally stashed their savings abroad. It had quite the desired effect, hoovering five billion euros out of San Marino’s banks (a third of all deposits) and causing the republic’s GDP to tumble by 13% in just a matter of months.

But Italy vented its spleen on San Marino long before that. In 1949, as a competitor to Venice’s casino, San Marino decided to build one of its own, which promptly siphoned gamblers from Venice and fattened Sammarinese national coffers. So, Italy implemented invasive customs checks on everyone entering San Marino, gambler or civilian, right down to stripping off their car tires. After eighteen months of harassment, San Marino finally gave up and closed its casino.

San Marino’s beautiful postage stamps are widely coveted among philatelists, and actually comprise a part of the country’s economy.

More recently, San Marino asserted its autonomy in other ways. Like Italy herself, San Marino depends on tasty tourist euros, and the Covid-19 epidemic took a big bite out of its economy. As of June, 2020, it was also suffering the highest Covid-19 death rate per capita of any country in the world. The EU, including Italy, had been slow to roll out vaccines, and San Marino was at the back of the line. Then Putin offered to sell them Russia’s vaccine, the Sputnik V, (yet to be approved by the EU at that time), which is how the Sammarinese came up with a plan to save the economy and its citizens: a vaccine holiday package.

Anyone willing to book a three-night stay in San Marino could also receive, for an additional 50 euros, both Sputnik V jabs, to be administered three weeks apart. It was quite the stiff middle finger to the EU’s headquarters in Brussels, which heightened suspicions that San Marino might be getting entirely too cozy with the Russians. The fact that Russians will soon be able to travel there visa-free isn’t doing much to allay those suspicions.

Photo by Trabanos

The San Marino constitution was drafted in 1600, in Latin, which makes it the oldest surviving national constitution in the world. Its first entry into the Olympic summer games was 1960, and since 2007, San Marino has been sending an official ambassador to the U.S. It has two official languages: Italian, and an old dialect from the nearby Emilia-Romagna region called Romagnol, which sounds like the bastard child of Italian and Latin, spoken by somebody gargling hot rocks.

Because of its mountainous terrain, there are no trains, which might be why San Marino is the least visited of all the European countries. You get there by bus, which will disgorge you into an area purposely designed for tourists. That means souvenir shops: T-shirts, shot glasses, key rings, sunglasses, every cheap, tasteless thing you can think of with the name San Marino on it. If you were to visit, I’d advise you to take your chances on roads less traveled, ones leading you away from the city center.

San Marino is the only country with more cars than people. It has also had more female heads of state than any other country, which is admittedly badass. That alone should inspire you to visit.

As the patron saint of lost causes, dying languages, and non-existent countries, I have a soft spot in my heart for San Marino’s refusal to roll over and embrace la dolce vita. These Sammarinese survive by whatever means possible, and there’s a lot to be said about that kind of pig-headed tenacity.

Me, I could be had for a decent plate of cacio e pepe. Put something like that in front of me, and I’ll toss you the keys to any kingdom you’ve got your eye on.

Prior to this article, had you ever heard of San Marino? Have you ever been to San Marino? I want to hear all about it. Leave your comments below.