San Marino prison, eight cells in a Capuchin convent

Of all San Marino’s oddities, the prison prompts the most questions, usually built on the same idea, that the country has just one prisoner. The truth is less neat and more interesting. There’s a tiny jail tucked into a convent, with twelve places, and when Council of Europe inspectors turned up they found it empty. I give it a paragraph in my San Marino facts; here’s the full story.

A prison in a rented convent

San Marino has one prison. The Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee, the CPT, also calls it the Capuchin prison, because it occupies part of a 16th-century monastery. And it adds a detail I love. The Capuchin order is still the sole owner of the building, and the state pays rent as its tenant. Not many countries lease their jail.

The convent adjoins the church of San Quirino, known as the Capuchins’ church, just outside Porta San Francesco, at the entrance to the old town. Wikipedia places the prison on Via dei Cappuccini and dates its opening to 1970, the year the Guaita stopped being used. It also says UNESCO wasn’t keen on a prison inside the convent and that a move to Gaviano, near Ventoso and the border, was planned, but I found no official source confirming that move.

How many prisoners does San Marino have?

The honest answer is that it depends on the year, and sometimes the answer is none. The CPT’s report on its visit of 19 to 22 September 2022 gives an official capacity of 12 places in 8 cells, with eight beds in place and four more if needed, which the governor thought unlikely. Over the whole of 2020, 8 people passed through, one of them a woman, and in 2021 it was 20, including two women. Most stayed a few days, and there were never more than four at once.

On the day the inspectors arrived, the prison was empty. The last inmate had left on 16 August 2022, and seven people had been held there that year. To me that figure says more about San Marino than the lone-prisoner myth does, because it describes a country using prison as a last resort, which is exactly what the committee encourages it to keep doing.

Wikipedia adds a few episodes. In 2009 it held as many as 14 people, from 2014 former Secretaries of State and former Captains Regent passed through it during the Conto Mazzini corruption inquiry, and in August 2018 two inmates escaped. Those come from a secondary source, so I pass them on with that caveat.

Inside, according to the European inspectors

The CPT has visited five times since 1992, and its reports are the best window there is into this building. In 2022 it found material conditions generally satisfactory, with cells of 8 to 10 m² that were well lit and ventilated. Inmates can spend up to seven hours a day in two exercise yards, which the committee called highly commendable, and have a well-stocked library, television, radio and board games. Since the previous visit in 2013, a healthcare team had been added.

It also set some homework. The guards are gendarmes, and the committee insists that those posted to the prison should never take part in criminal investigations. It asked for specific training and for the law to guarantee, as a principle, visits, phone calls and letters. The authorities described a rebuild and extension, with a separate wing for women and juveniles, cells with their own bathrooms and new visiting rooms, due within eighteen months. I couldn’t confirm that it has been finished.

The old prison, up in the Guaita

Until 1970, San Marino’s prisoners weren’t in a convent but in a fortress. The State Museums explain that in the Guaita, the first tower, the garrison’s old quarters served as a jail from the late 18th century, only for sentences of up to six months. Anything longer meant an Italian prison.

That era explains something you’ll see every day in the main square. The Guard of the Rock was formed on 26 May 1754 as a squad of one officer and twelve militiamen to guard the prisoners in the Rocca, and it didn’t start standing guard at the Palazzo Pubblico until 1762. So the ceremony everyone photographs began as a prison detail, which has its own guide, the changing of the guard in San Marino.

Can you see it?

Not the current prison. It’s a working jail, with no tourist visits of any kind that I could find, and the right thing is to leave it be. What you can see is the old prison in the Guaita, on the €11 State Museums pass, and the Capuchin church, inside and out. And if your real question is whether San Marino is a safe place to travel, the figures point the same way, as I cover in safety and rules in San Marino.