The Witches' Passage, the battlements between San Marino's first two towers

Ask me for a single moment in San Marino and I wouldn’t name a tower or a museum. I’d name these 200 metres between the first and second towers, with the parapets beside you and the whole Romagna plain falling away towards the sea. The Passo delle Streghe has no ticket desk and no published hours, hardly anyone mentions it when they talk about a visit, and it’s the part I’d do again.

What exactly is the Passo delle Streghe?

It’s the battlemented stretch of the walkway that links San Marino’s three towers, running from the Guaita, the First Tower, to the Cesta and its arms museum. The private site sanmarinosite.com puts it at around 200 metres, with parapets, within a path of just over a kilometre that follows the ridge to the Montale. In Italian it’s the Passo delle Streghe, the Witches’ Passage, and it’s a sentry walk, a battlemented path along the top of the ridge.

The State Museums don’t give it a page of its own. They mention it in passing, while describing the path that links the towers along the rim of Titano, and call it a sight of incomparable splendour. For once I agree with the official adjective.

What will you see from the Witches’ Pass?

According to sanmarinosite.com, the view stretches along the Adriatic from Cesenatico down to Pesaro, and inland over the Marecchia valley and the Montefeltro. On clear days, the same site says, even Istria across the water. I won’t promise Istria, because it depends on the day, but you’ll certainly get the coast and the plain.

What I like about this stretch is that you see everything at once. Behind you the Guaita sits on its rock, ahead the Cesta crowns Titano’s highest point at 755 metres, and to one side there’s the drop. It’s the photo I’d take home from San Marino. If you want to compare, the other high spots are ranked on my San Marino viewpoints page.

When to walk it

The sea is to the east. In the morning the sun rises on that side and you look at the coast into the light. In the afternoon the sun is behind you and the landscape comes out clean. So I’d do the paying towers in the morning and walk back through here after lunch, taking my time.

There’s another reason. Plenty of visitors come up from the coast for a few hours and head down before the evening, and in August, the busiest month of the year according to official figures, you notice it. Two hundred metres of battlements with a queue are not the same as the same path with room to stop at every gap. If you’re coming on the Rimini bus, which takes 55 minutes and costs €7, work backwards from your return, as on the timetable running until 7 November 2026 the last departure from San Marino is at 19:00.

Fitting it into the three towers route

The natural order is north to south. Climb from the old town to the Guaita, go in if you have the pass, leave by the Passo delle Streghe for the Cesta and, if you’ve still got the legs, keep going for roughly twenty minutes among the trees to the Montale, the Third Tower. The same private site reckons on around three hours for the whole route from Piazza della Libertà, going inside the two towers that open.

The witches’ stretch is the one part I would never cut. In a hurry you can skip the Montale and even the inside of a tower, but not this. Pass prices, opening times and the full order are on my Three Towers route page.

The name, and what I don’t know

I haven’t found any official source explaining why it’s called the Witches’ Passage, and I’d rather not pass off a legend as history. What I do know is what you see, how long it is and that it’s free.

Nor is there a published timetable for the path in the sources I’ve been able to read, beyond the hours of the towers at either end. If you go up late, I’d walk it in daylight, as it runs along the very edge of the mountain, and with small children I’d hold hands by the parapet.