Walking in San Marino, from the Titano ridge to the valleys

San Marino isn’t a mountain destination in the Alpine sense, but it makes far more sense on foot than from a coach seat. The country covers 61 km², with a rocky ridge topped by three towers and valleys of woodland and old mills that almost nobody visits. Here are the walks I’d do and, just as plainly, what I couldn’t verify, because I haven’t found an official network of trails with published distances.

The Three Towers walk, the one not to miss

It all starts in Piazza della Libertà. From there you climb towards the Guaita, the First Tower, whose core dates from the 11th century according to the State Museums, and follow the edge of the cliff to the Cesta, Titano’s highest point at 755 metres. According to a private website, the three towers are linked by a wall path of just over a kilometre, and the full route, there and back and going into the first two, takes about three hours.

The stretch I wouldn’t miss is the Passo delle Streghe, about 200 metres of battlemented path between the Guaita and the Cesta. It’s free, you can walk it without entering either tower, and it has the finest view in the country. I explain it in depth in the Witches’ Passage, and the whole group in the Three Towers of San Marino.

On to the Montale, where the crowds fade

Beyond the Cesta, a woodland path leads to the third tower, the Montale. Unofficial sources put it at about twenty minutes on easy ground. The tower can’t be visited inside and isn’t on the pass, which is exactly why fewer people come, and that’s what I like most about this stretch. To get back you can retrace your steps or head down into the city and take the cable car to Borgo Maggiore, which leaves every quarter of an hour.

A word of warning about the climb from below. There’s also a path, the Rupe trail, from Borgo Maggiore up to the city on foot. The trouble is that only the tourist board describes it, on a website I don’t use as a source, so I’d rather give you no distance, climb or time than guess. Ask at the tourist office before you set off.

Two short walks without leaving the capital

If you’re not doing the whole ridge, there are two small options. From car park P9, a private website quoting the parking office mentions the Via delle Scalette, more than 300 steps up to the centre, as an alternative to the two panoramic lifts. And the capital’s castello doesn’t end at the walls. According to its government page, to the west it has the Montecchio park, open to everyone, and the Fosso di Canepa, an untouched stretch of woodland where old disused mills still stand. It’s a side of the City of San Marino that almost nobody who comes up on the coach ever sees.

Walking the old railway

San Marino once had a train. The little blue and white railway ran from Rimini to the capital from 1932 and stopped in 1944, according to Italian Wikipedia. What matters for walkers is that the line is still there. In Borgo Maggiore, the tunnel by the old station on Piazza Grande can be walked through, as the castello’s page says. Further down, in Serravalle, a footpath and cycle path follows the old railway embankment from Parco Laiala to Domagnano. It’s flat, peaceful and shows you countryside day-trippers never see.

The castelli valleys

With a car and half a day, it’s worth dropping down to the castelli in the south and west. In Faetano, the Marano park follows the river, and the castello’s page mentions a footpath designed for long walks out of the village. Lake Faetano, the country’s fishing lake, sits on the same Marano road. Chiesanuova has 114 hectares of woodland and the Gorgascura area, where the Molarini watermill still stands on the bank of the Fosso Canepa with its walls intact, a rarity in the country. In Acquaviva there’s La Pineta, the park on the summit of Montecerreto. I go through them one by one in the nine castelli of San Marino.

When to walk and what to bring

I’d choose May, June or September, with average highs between 19 and 25 °C in the Arpae series quoted by English Wikipedia. In July and August the average high goes above 26 °C, so I’d set out very early. In winter expect cold and, above 400 or 500 metres, snow most years. And I’d wear shoes with decent grip, because almost everything is cobbles, slopes and steps.