San Marino opening hours and public holidays

Timing matters more in San Marino than you’d expect. The country is small, most people visit for an afternoon, and a ticket desk that shuts earlier than you think or a last bus at seven can reshape the whole day. I’ve pulled together the hours of everything a typical visit touches, plus the country’s public holidays, so you don’t have to hunt through a dozen websites.

Winter hours start now

From 27 September 2026 the State Museums switch to winter hours. They open from 09:00 to 16:50 with the ticket desk closing at 16:30, and stay that way until 28 March 2027, broken only by 1 January. Those hours cover every site on the €11 pass, which takes in the two towers you can go inside, the Guaita and the Cesta, along with the State Museum, the Pinacoteca and several more.

The part that matters to me is the ticket desk. In summer you can get in until 19:15; in winter, until 16:30. Come up from Rimini on a mid-morning bus and you’ve got four or five hours for two towers and a couple of museums, and the €5 late-entry ticket makes little sense because it leaves you hardly any time inside. Each site is covered in my San Marino museums guide.

What’s open on a Sunday?

If you’re coming at the weekend, the good news is that almost everything aimed at visitors opens seven days a week. The State Museums have no weekly closing day, San Marino Outlet trades daily from 10:00 to 20:00, and the private museums publish Monday-to-Sunday hours, trimmed in winter. The Torture Museum, for instance, opens 10:00-19:00 but only Friday to Sunday in November and January.

What doesn’t open on a Sunday is the admin side. Post offices are shut on Sundays, and several on Saturdays too. For getting around inside the country, the SMUVI on-demand bus runs 08:00-20:00 on Sundays and holidays, shorter than on weekdays.

I couldn’t find any official rule or source on general shop hours in the old town, so I won’t give you a time I can’t stand behind. If there’s something specific you need, I’d buy it before mid-afternoon.

Transport sets the end of your day

For me the most important time in San Marino isn’t a museum’s, it’s the last bus. On Bonelli’s timetable from 15 September to 7 November 2026, the first bus to Rimini leaves at 08:10 and the last at 19:00. Miss it and there’s nothing until the morning. Times and stops are all in the Rimini to San Marino bus timetable.

The cable car from Borgo Maggiore to the old town starts at 07:45 and runs every quarter of an hour. It finishes at 19:00 between October and March, at 19:45 in spring and in September, and at 00:45 from 1 July to 6 September. Put one date in your diary, because from 21 to 23 October 2026 it’s closed for testing.

San Marino’s public holidays

The Central Bank of San Marino publishes an annual list of the days its payment system shuts, and it’s the most reliable holiday calendar I’ve found. There are twenty in 2026. Alongside the religious holidays shared with Italy come some you won’t see anywhere else, such as 5 February for Saint Agatha and the liberation of 1740, 25 March for the Arengo of 1906, 28 July for the fall of Fascism and 3 September for the saint and the founding of the Republic. New Year’s Eve is on the list too.

The two most colourful fall on 1 April and 1 October, the days the two heads of state take office, which I explain in my page on the Captains Regent. Of what’s left of 2026 after 27 September, that leaves 1 October (a Thursday), 1 and 2 November, 8 December and four days at the end of December.

On a public holiday the museums open as usual, bar their three closing days, while post offices and public services shut. And one holiday actually saves you money, because on 3 September nobody pays at the State Museums.

What has no published hours

Three gaps are worth knowing about. The Basilica of Saint Marinus doesn’t publish opening or Mass times in any official source I could read, and visits pause during Mass. Nor are there published times for the changing of the guard. And the Thursday market in Borgo Maggiore appears with two different times on the same government page, so I’d go early in the morning. For planning the rest hour by hour, see my one-day San Marino itinerary.