The San Marino facts I can actually prove

San Marino has a reputation as a quirky country, and half the facts doing the rounds have no source or are told wrong. I’ve gathered here the ones I can back with an official document, and where all I have is a secondary source, I say so. Some you can see in person, so I point out where.

A country with two heads of state at once

San Marino has no president and no monarch. It has two Captains Regent who serve jointly, under the principle of collegiality, for just six months. They take office on 1 April and 1 October each year. The system goes back a long way, since the first document naming two consuls dates from 12 December 1243 and the six-month term already appears in statutes from the late 13th century.

Two rules delight me. The first is the divieto law, which since the 16th century has barred anyone from serving as regent again for three years. The second is the Sindacato della Reggenza, which since 1499 has let any citizen with the vote report, within 15 days of the term ending, both what the regents did and what they neglected. I explain the whole system under the Captains Regent.

Petitions straight to parliament

The other side of the system is the istanze d’arengo. Twice a year, on the first Sunday after the new Regency takes office, any adult citizen can submit petitions of public interest, and the Council must debate them within the semester. It echoes the old Arengo, the gathering of heads of household once summoned by a bell outside the Pieve, and I find it a very Sammarinese way of keeping a medieval habit alive by giving it a modern job.

Lincoln, citizen of San Marino

The letter left San Marino on 29 March 1861 and Lincoln’s answer is dated 7 May. He accepted the honorary citizenship and praised a state small in size but great in honour. The State Department treats that reply as the moment the US recognised the republic.

A prison at the top of a tower

Prisoners were held in the Guaita, the oldest tower, until 1970, in cells in use since the 1700s. They served short terms there, six months at most; anything longer meant an Italian jail. The courtyard still has cannons that were a gift from Victor Emmanuel III in 1907, which the Guard of the Rock fires as salutes on feast days. You see it all on the €11 pass at the Guaita. Today’s prison sits in a convent rented from the Capuchins and held nobody at all in 2022, which I cover in San Marino prison.

More Sammarinese abroad than you’d guess

28,165 Sammarinese live in the country. Abroad, according to the Statistics Office, there were 18,047 in July 2026, over half the number at home. Italy comes first with 7,184, but what surprises me is second place, Argentina, with 3,232, ahead of the United States with 3,038, and France. Spain, by contrast, has just 29, a reminder that the old emigration routes ran to France and across the Atlantic rather than south.

Post, stamps and a founding date on the paperwork

Poste San Marino presents the republic as the first state in the world to devise a postal service for everyone. Its story starts in 1607, when the Council named a postman to walk letters down to Rimini and back. It’s the company’s own claim, so I treat it with some caution. The first stamps arrived on 1 August 1877, and philately is now almost an industry, which I cover in San Marino coins and stamps.

Another favourite sits in the 2011 flag law. At its foot, beside 22 July 2011, it reads 1710 d.F.R., year 1710 of the Sammarinese era. I explain it on the San Marino flag page.

Things that aren’t where you’d expect

The San Marino MotoGP Grand Prix is held at Misano, in Italy. The Michelin Guide has a selection called «San Marino and surroundings» with 27 restaurants, none of them in San Marino. And there’s no five-star hotel in San Marino to find, as the statistics office’s categories run from one to four stars. To finish, one that sums up the country. According to Wikipedia, San Marino turned down Napoleon’s 1797 offer of a corridor to the sea because it didn’t want to grow. I quote regent Onofri’s reply in the history of San Marino. If any of these oddities has talked you into going, the whole trip is in my guide to San Marino.