Every stream on Monte Titano runs out into Italy. San Marino takes all of its electricity and natural gas from Italy, its bishop resides at Pennabilli in the Italian province of Pesaro e Urbino, its judges may not, save for statutory exceptions, be its own citizens, and its visitors come up by road from Rimini. San Marino has held the same 61 square kilometres since 1463, inside a single 39-kilometre border with Italy. It has kept its sovereignty by agreement with whoever governed the land around it: the papacy, the Kingdom of Italy from 1862 and, through Italy, the European Union.
At a glance
Where it is
Where San Marino is, and what is around it
San Marino is landlocked. It shares a border with 1 country, counted as shared borders, which includes neighbours across water.
ItalyWhere San Marino's single border runs
San Marino lies about ten kilometres inland from the Adriatic coast near Rimini, and all 39 kilometres of its border are shared with Italy. The province of Rimini, in Emilia-Romagna, wraps around almost the whole of it. A stretch of about three kilometres in the south faces the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche instead. Britannica describes the territory as an irregular rectangle 13 kilometres long at its greatest, measured from north-east to south-west.
The middle of it is Monte Titano, a crest of pale limestone with three summits. Its height depends on the source: 739 metres in the Wikipedia article on the mountain, 756 metres in the country record. The capital stands walled on the western side of the ridge and counted 3,997 residents on 31 October 2020. Newer building has spread down the north-eastern slope along the road to Dogana, in the castello of Serravalle, where the road crosses into Italy.
Water follows the same slope out. Britannica names the Marano and the Ausa, running toward the Adriatic, and the San Marino stream, which falls into the Marecchia, and all three leave the republic for Italy before they reach the sea. Centuries of quarrying used up the mountain's building stone, and the territory now has no mineral resources. Its landscape is traced from the ridge down to the border in the geography article.
Who lives inside San Marino's border
The statistics office counted 34,059 residents on 31 March 2025, up 134 on a year earlier, and 35,482 people present once those living there on permits were added. Sammarinese citizens made up 79.6% of the population present on that date and Italian citizens 16.1%. The growth depended on people arriving. Between January and March 2025 the republic recorded 37 births and 82 deaths.
About 13,000 Sammarinese lived abroad in September 2023, by Wikipedia's count, some 6,600 of them in Italy and 3,000 in the United States. Citizenship is hard to acquire, and Wikipedia ties the strictness to taxes on labour and capital income that are lower than Italy's.
Italian is the official language. The Sammarinese dialect of Romagnol is spoken mainly by older people and is considered endangered, and the dialect, like the diocese and the cooking, is shared with the Romagna and the Montefeltro around the mountain. San Marino: culture separates what San Marino shares with those neighbours from what belongs to it alone.
How San Marino kept its Malatesta war borders
Tradition dates the republic to 301, when Marinus, a stonemason from the island of Rab, took refuge on Monte Titano. The oldest document in the State Archive, the Placito Feretrano, dates from 885. The first two consuls known by name, the office later called the Captains Regent, were elected on 12 December 1243, and the Statutes of 1600, in force from 1 September of that year, remain at the core of the constitutional framework.
The territory reached its present extent in 1463. San Marino joined an alliance against Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini, and after his defeat Pope Pius II gave it castles and the towns of Fiorentino, Montegiardino and Serravalle. Faetano joined of its own accord later that year.
From then on the republic's survival rested on the consent of whoever ruled around it. Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, the papal governor of Ravenna, occupied San Marino on 17 October 1739, and Pope Clement XII restored its independence on 5 February 1740. The regents declined Napoleon's offer of more land in 1797, and the Congress of Vienna confirmed the republic's independence in 1815. After Italian unification a convention of friendship with the Kingdom of Italy followed in 1862.
San Marino stayed neutral through the First World War and declared neutrality in the Second on 28 July 1943. Allied bombers struck it on 26 June 1944, and when the front reached the Gothic Line that September the republic took in about 100,000 refugees, at a time when its own population was around 15,000. It joined the Council of Europe in 1988 and the United Nations in 1992. San Marino: history follows each of those confirmations and the refusal behind them.
Who governs San Marino and who judges it
Two Captains Regent hold the headship of state together for six months, invested on 1 April and 1 October, and neither may take the office again for three years. The Grand and General Council elects them. Its 60 members are chosen by direct universal suffrage for five years, and it also elects the Congress of State, the government of up to ten Secretaries of State. There is no formal head of government, although the Secretary of State for Foreign and Political Affairs has taken on many of a prime minister's prerogatives over the years.
The courts are staffed from outside the citizenry by design. Article 15 of the 1974 Declaration of Citizens' Rights states that "save for statutory exceptions, judges cannot be San Marinese citizens."
The Arengo, the early assembly of heads of families, lives on as the Istanza d'Arengo, a petition adult citizens may present to the regents on the first Sunday after each investiture. The nine castelli each elect a Captain and a council every five years. San Marino: politics sets out the chambers, the electoral law and the checks on the regents.
What San Marino earns across the Italian border
| Indicator | Value | Measured |
|---|---|---|
| Output per person | US$59,871 | 2023 |
| Output per person, at purchasing power | US$78,810 | 2023 |
| Exports of goods and services | 181% of output | 2024 |
| Labour force | 25,001 | 31 March 2025 |
| Visitors | 2,110,236 | 2025 |
| Life expectancy | 85.8 years | 2024 |
For a century and a half San Marino has earned from being a separate state inside Italy. The first economic treaty with the new Kingdom of Italy, signed in 1865, created a Sammarinese lira equal to the Italian one, and the convention of 1939 put the two into a customs union. Lower taxes, anonymous companies and banking secrecy later drew in bank deposits of almost €14 billion by 2008.
Most of it left after the financial crisis. Output fell by 40% between 2008 and 2019, and deposits dropped to €5.2 billion. Anonymous companies were abolished in 2010 and banking secrecy in 2017.
Manufacturing and visitors carry the economy now, and most of what it sells crosses the one border. Italy took around 88% of San Marino's exports and supplied 78% of its imports in 2017. The euro arrived the same way. An agreement of 29 November 2000, concluded by Italy on behalf of the European Community, gave San Marino the right to use it, and a monetary agreement signed directly with the European Union in 2012 replaced that one. San Marino: economy follows the banking years and what replaced them.
What San Marino celebrates as its own
On 3 September the relics of Saint Marinus are carried through the city, and the same date is kept as the anniversary of the republic's foundation. Saint Agatha is the second patron because her feast day, 5 February 1740, was the day the Alberoni occupation ended. The Crossbow Corps, about 80 volunteers, has given demonstrations of crossbow shooting at festivals since 1295 and remains a statutory military unit.
The church, too, is organised from across the border. San Marino has no episcopal see of its own. It falls within the diocese of Montefeltro-San Marino, whose bishop resides at Pennabilli, and the apostolic nunciature to the republic, formal since 1988, is vested in the nuncio to Italy. In 2011, 97.2% of the population professed the Catholic faith. The culture article takes up the feasts, the militia uniforms and the museums filled by gifts.
How visitors reach Monte Titano
Visitors come up from Rimini, as they have since an electric railway ran 31.5 kilometres from there to the capital between 1932 and 1944. The coach from Rimini's railway station now takes about fifty minutes, stopping at Cerasolo, Dogana, Serravalle, Domagnano and Borgo Maggiore on the way up, and nobody checks passports at the border. At Borgo Maggiore a cable car inaugurated on 1 August 1959 climbs to the city.
The statistics office counted 2,110,236 visitors in 2025, more than 40,000 up on 2024, and 2,193 beds in the same year. In 2008 UNESCO inscribed the San Marino Historic Centre and Mount Titano, 55 hectares with a buffer zone of 167, under criterion (iii). Its statement counts the restoration and reconstruction directed by Gino Zani between the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth as part of the history of the property. San Marino: travel covers the routes, the calendar and the short stays.
What the association agreement with the EU would change
San Marino sits outside the European Union and inside its customs territory. The Agreement on Cooperation and Customs Union signed with the European Economic Community in 1991 entered into force on 1 April 2002. Negotiations on a wider association agreement with Andorra, Monaco and San Marino opened in 2015; Monaco suspended its part in September 2023, and the talks with the other two were concluded that December.
On 16 July 2026 the Council of the EU authorised signature and provisional application. The agreement would bring San Marino into an extended internal market on the same rules as member states. Access for financial services comes in stages and depends on an audit of its regulation and supervision, with a role for the European Supervisory Authorities. Pre-signing by the member states was planned for September 2026, followed by the Commission's signature and the European Parliament's consent.
Read
Everything about San Marino
Six articles, each answering one question and each written to be read on its own.
The record
What is measured about San Marino
Pages that nobody writes, built from the record and from the data files beside it.
Common questions
Questions about San Marino
Where do San Marino's electricity and water come from?
All of its electricity and natural gas are imported from Italy, and Wikipedia records that most of its food and water come from Italy as well. Centuries of quarrying exhausted the limestone of Monte Titano, and the territory has no mineral resources left.
Why is San Marino's bishop based in Italy?
San Marino has no episcopal see of its own. It lies within the diocese of Montefeltro-San Marino, whose bishop resides at Pennabilli in the Italian province of Pesaro e Urbino. The apostolic nunciature to the republic, formal since 1988, is held by the papal nuncio to Italy.
Who are the judges in San Marino's courts?
The 1974 Declaration of Citizens' Rights states that, save for statutory exceptions, judges cannot be San Marinese citizens. The courts of a republic with 34,059 residents on 31 March 2025 are therefore staffed largely from outside it.
How many people live in San Marino?
The statistics office counted 34,059 residents on 31 March 2025, and 35,482 people present once residents on permits were included. Sammarinese citizens were 79.6% of those present and Italian citizens 16.1%. About 13,000 more Sammarinese lived abroad in September 2023, around 6,600 of them in Italy.
Will San Marino join the European Union?
The agreement under way is an association, and San Marino stays outside the Union under it. The Council of the EU authorised its signature, jointly with Andorra, on 16 July 2026. It would bring San Marino into an extended internal market on the same rules as member states with financial services admitted in stages after an audit.
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