Is San Marino expensive? What a day or two really costs

When people ask whether San Marino is expensive, they’re usually picturing the souvenir shops or the terraces with a view. I’d rather do the sums. San Marino has very few costs you can’t avoid, and the rest comes down to choices. Below is a budget by type of traveller using the official prices I could check, along with a clear note on what has no published price at all. The other question, whether it’s worth going, I answer in is San Marino worth visiting.

The costs you can’t dodge

Most people arrive from Rimini, and that’s where the only two costs I’d call fixed come in. The Bonelli bus is €7 each way, €14 return, and takes 55 minutes. The State Museums pass costs €11 and opens seven sites, including the two towers you can go inside. Together, €25 a head. Over-65s and university students with a card pay €8 for the pass, and in the last slot before closing the ticket desk offers a €5 ticket valid at every site. On winter hours, with doors shutting at 16:50, that leaves so little time inside that I wouldn’t count it as a real saving.

Getting to Rimini is a budget line of its own if you land at Bologna. The Marconi Express from the airport to the central station is €12.80 one way, and a regional train on to Rimini €11.30, so allow about €24 before you’ve even reached the bus stop.

Everything else is optional. You see the old town on foot, and the free side of San Marino is big enough that I’ve given it its own page, San Marino free and cheap, rather than repeat the list here.

A day per person, three ways

The budget traveller takes the bus, buys the pass and eats a piadina, €6-10 according to a local website. Add a €1.70 Tre Monti snack bar, the maker’s own online price, and the day comes to €33-37.

The comfortable version does the same, then rides the cable car down to Borgo Maggiore and back for €7, sits down in a trattoria for €20-30 according to the same website, and takes home a whole Tre Monti cake at €14. That’s €66-76.

Drivers save the bus fare but pay to park. A local website citing the state parking office puts a full day at €8 per car, free outside charging hours. For two people, the parking split between you costs less than two bus tickets. The details are in where to park in San Marino.

What about children?

San Marino is generous here. The State Museums let under-18s in free, so only adults pay for the pass. On the cable car, children under 120 cm ride free, and on the Rimini bus those under 100 cm travel free if they don’t take a seat. Above that height it’s a full fare. A family of two adults and two children aged 8 and 10 would pay €22 for museums and, if both children are over a metre tall, €56 for the bus. More ideas in San Marino with kids.

Two days, and the part I can’t pin down

A second day adds somewhere to sleep, and here I have to be straight with you. No official website and none of the hotel sites I’ve read publishes nightly prices, so I’m not going to invent one. I can tell you that San Marino charges a tourist tax, mentioned in the government’s 2027 economic plan without an amount, and that hotel-rate parking is €6 a night according to that same local website. If the budget stretches to a treat, I look at staying in a San Marino four-star, the top of the scale.

The rest of a second day is cheap. A cable car day ticket is €10, the Museum of Curiosities €9 an adult and dinner at a restaurant with a view €35-70. If day two takes in San Leo across the border, add €11 for the fortress if you’re over 25. To decide where to base yourself, the areas are compared in where to stay in San Marino.

How I’d spend it

If money’s tight, I’d cut lunch and the cable car, never the pass. If there’s room in the budget, I’d put it into a night up on the hill and a dinner with a view, because the town without the coming and going of buses is a different place. Either way, before leaving I’d check my mobile plan, as San Marino sits outside the EU’s regulated roaming and UK networks set their own charges there, which is the one cost that could wreck such modest sums.