The history of San Marino, seventeen centuries on one mountain

San Marino’s history tends to be told in a rush, the 301 founding and the oldest-republic tag, and left there. What interests me is what came after, because founding a state on a mountain isn’t the hard part. Keeping it going for seventeen centuries, surrounded by much bigger neighbours, is. Here’s the story, separating tradition from what’s on paper.

A stonemason, a mountain and the year 301

Tradition says that on 3 September 301 a stonemason from the island of Arbe, now Rab in Croatia, named Marinus, fled Diocletian’s persecution and built a small Christian community on Mount Titano. The same tradition has the mountain’s owner, a wealthy woman from Rimini called Felicissima, give it to the community. The state still celebrates the feast of the patron saint and the founding every 3 September.

It’s worth being clear. No official source presents this as historical fact, and I’d tell it as what it is, the country’s founding story. What you can see is how the state itself tells it. Emilio Retrosi’s large 1894 painting in the parliament chamber shows the saint at the foot of Titano handing the Sammarinese their legacy of liberty and independence.

From the 13th century to the statutes

The records begin in the Middle Ages. The core of the Guaita, first of the three towers of San Marino, is 11th-century and sheltered the first inhabitants. On 12 December 1243 comes the first document naming two consuls, Filippo da Sterpeto and Oddone di Scarito, the origin of today’s Captains Regent. The earliest known statutes date from 1295 to 1302.

Back then the Arengo governed, an assembly of heads of household that met in the porch of the Pieve at the ring of a bell. Over time power passed to the Council of Sixty, which the 17th-century statutes call the supreme and absolute prince of the community. From it comes the Great and General Council, which still has 60 members.

How did San Marino get its territory?

In 1463, in the war between Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, and Pope Pius II’s league, San Marino sided with the Pope. As a reward it received Domagnano, Fiorentino, Montegiardino and Serravalle, and Faetano asked to join that same year. The government confirms Serravalle, once a Malatesta outpost, passed to San Marino then. The borders haven’t moved since, and the nine castelli of San Marino are the result.

There were close calls. The best remembered is the occupation by Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, papal legate in Romagna, which ended on 5 February 1740, the feast of Saint Agatha. She has been co-patron of the Republic ever since, and a mural in the Palazzo Pubblico, the Alberoni plaque, commemorates it.

Napoleon, Garibaldi and Lincoln

According to Wikipedia, Napoleon’s France recognised San Marino in 1797 and offered to extend its territory to the sea. The regent Antonio Onofri replied that the Republic, content with its smallness, didn’t dare accept the generous offer. I think that answer explains its survival better than anything.

In 1849, after the fall of the Roman Republic, Garibaldi crossed into San Marino with his column and asked for asylum. The regent Belzoppi granted it on condition there’d be no fighting on its territory, and a plaque in Piazza di sopra in Borgo Maggiore recalls the stay of Anita and Giuseppe. In 1861 the regents wrote to Abraham Lincoln offering honorary citizenship, and he accepted with a line the State Department preserves, that although their dominion was small, their state was one of the most honoured in all history.

From oligarchy to the ballot box

The 19th century closed with the new Palazzo Pubblico, built between 1884 and 1894 by Francesco Azzurri. The big shift came on 25 March 1906, when the Arengo met again and the Sammarinese chose to elect the Council by vote rather than co-option. That date is now a public holiday. In 1932 the Rimini-San Marino railway opened, and its tunnel can now be walked in Borgo Maggiore.

In the Second World War San Marino stayed neutral and, according to Wikipedia, took in more than 100,000 displaced people as the front crossed the Gothic Line. The National Gallery gives its first room to those years. Since 1945 the regents have been elected by the Council rather than drawn by lot, as they had been since 1483. Then came the 1974 Declaration of Rights, the core of San Marino’s constitution, the Council of Europe in 1988, the UN in 1992 and UNESCO in 2008. What all this means today I cover in is San Marino a country?.