NOVEMBER 2020
Sometime this year I spotted amazing pictures of the three towers of San Marino and I knew I had to go there. When we decided on Tuscany for our summer destination I quickly figured out that it would be really easy to visit San Marino, as it is only a few hours of driving located away. San Marino is a separate country and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to visit a new country. As I knew it would be my only opportunity to visit a new country this year 😉 But San Marino turned out very different than we expected… read all about it in this blog.
About San Marino
San Marino as a country is only 61 square kilometers and its capital is also called San Marino. San Marino is fully surrounded by Italy and has views of the Adriatic Sea. It usually is a popular day trip, as Rimini is located close by, but when we visited in September it was very quiet. You can pay with euros in San Marino, though it is officially not an Euro-country.
We loved the weather in San Marino, in Tuscany it was over 30 degrees Celsius when we visited, but in San Marino it was much cooler, though sunny. This is the case because the capital city is located on a little mountain “Monte Titano” of 750 meters. Interestingly enough autumn seemed to have already started in San Marino at the end of September.
We only visited the capital as I wanted to visit the Three Towers and the old city wall of San Marino. The old town center is car free, but there are several parking lots surrounding the city. We paid € 4,50 for five hours of parking, which was super affordable. Don’t forget to bring coins!
When you read about San Marino’s history, it seems like a super interesting place. Apparently San Marino is the oldest republic in the world. Life standards are incredibly high in San Marino. The amazing medieval towers are absolutely worth a visit, the views over the country are amazing and you can really sense the medieval times when you walk around. The old city wall is absolutely lovely too and can be visited for free. However, we were disappointed by the rest of the old city center. We felt like the rest of the city center was faded glory. The city center pretty much consisted of duty-free tourist shops, out of style hotels, cafetaria like restaurants and casinos. When walking around we suddenly understood what San Marino now is all about and why they were rich. We even spotted shops with imitation guns and weapons, very strange. COVID-19 definitely hit San Marino hard as we’d hardly seen other tourists. I cannot imagine how hectic the center must be when all bathing guests of Rimini try to fill up the Casino 😉
The Three Towers
Getting back to a positive blog here! I would absolutely recommend to visit at least one of The Three Towers. We visited The Guaita Tower, this is the oldest one as it was constructed in the 11th century. It was renovated several times and is now being kept in the 15th century form. The entrance fee was about € 4,50 per person. I have to admit that there wasn’t a whole lot of information when we visited, but I liked that we were able to roam around freely. As there weren’t many visitors at all it was really easy to take pictures and the place is super picturesque! You can also visit the tower walls for free, but I did prefer the views from the tower. There is also a discounted ticket for all towers, but it didn’t seem worth it to me, as the towers all lookalike very much.
