The National Gallery, the San Marino that isn't medieval

After a morning of walls, towers and coats of arms, the National Gallery is where San Marino stops being medieval. It’s the state museum of modern and contemporary art, it’s on the same pass as the towers and, to my taste, it’s the best antidote to the theme-park feeling the historic centre sometimes gives off.

From a 1956 prize to a museum

The State Museums explain that the gallery is the end of a road that began in 1956 with the Titano Figurative Art Prize. That prize coincided with a new cultural debate and with the end of the slow recovery after the Second World War. According to Wikipedia it opened on 19 August 1956 and led, from 1959 to 1967, to the Republic’s International Art Biennials. The critic Giulio Carlo Argan directed the 1963 and 1967 editions, and San Marino became a meeting point for artists from eastern and western Europe. Prize-winning works passed to the state, and that’s where the collection comes from.

The same encyclopaedia says the gallery opened under this name on 7 July 2018 and now holds more than 1,000 works, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, installations and artists’ books. Among the names it lists are Emilio Vedova, Renato Guttuso, with «La resa» of 1945, Renato Birolli, Corrado Cagli, Achille Perilli, Mimmo Jodice, Enzo Cucchi, Luigi Ontani and Enzo Mari.

Four rooms

The first, «Reality and abstraction», focuses on the Second World War and the post-war years, and how historical events tangle with politics and society. It’s the one I wouldn’t skip, because it tells of a neutral San Marino full of refugees that the walls say nothing about, summarised in the history of San Marino. The second, «Experimental languages», covers the 4th and 6th Biennials, between 1963 and 1968. The third, «Crossing history», brings together artists who from the late 1970s went back to painting, colour and material.

The fourth is the performing archive, an open space of documents, artists’ portfolios and special projects. It holds the record of «Provoc’arte», the 1991 show that led Maurizio Cattelan to intervene inside the old railway tunnel of the Trenino Bianco Azzurro. And there’s a collection that feels very typical of this country, 29 books by artists living in Europe’s small states, from Andorra to Monaco, Malta and Liechtenstein, plus the Faroes, Åland, Guernsey and Jersey.

The building

The home is the Logge dei Volontari, in the Giardino dei Liburni. According to Wikipedia, the building went up in the late 1930s for the Risorgimento Museum, part of the grand plan with which the engineer Gino Zani remade the look of the city. There’s something neat about contemporary art in a piece of that rebuilt San Marino. The same programme remodelled the Teatro Titano, which reopened in 1941. Some temporary shows go to another venue, Palazzo SUMS, so I’d check where each exhibition is before setting off.

Hours, admission and exhibitions

On winter hours, in force from 27 September 2026, you can visit between 09:00 and 16:50, last admission at 16:30. It’s shut on 1 January and 25 December, and closes early on 2 November. Entry is with the €11 pass (€8 reduced), valid too at the two towers, the Pinacoteca, the State Museum and the Stamp and Coin Museum; under-18s go free. From 16:00 there’s a €5 ticket at the box office. For temporary shows, such as this winter’s Mark Francis exhibition, see San Marino’s events.