The Serene Republic of San Marino is the independent country you’ve never heard of. And nobody you know ever went there. Until now.
Home to 35,000 people, who, for all intents and purposes, are Italians, each one of them will correct you if they must. They are “Marinese”, NOT Italian. The good citizens of San Marino, it seems, have been nobly suffering their only neighbors, the Italians, since the Republic was established in 301 AD, but any one of them will eagerly tell you, if the opportunity arises, that they don’t like it when Italians drive up from beyond Rimini (about an hour down the mountainside) to take jobs in San Marino that rightfully belong to Marinese locals. Nobody actually said the word “wetback” but apparently there’s a drop or two of bad blood that goes back to roughly the 13th century. (Fearing that Guido might spit in our pasta, we kept our silly, over-rated, liberal California opinions about immigration reform wisely to ourselves.)
It took them just over 700 years to do it, but eventually the World Heritage Committee got around to designating San Marino as worthy of addition to its list as “an exceptional testimony of the establishment of a representative democracy …blah, blah, blah…”. Followers of our site will appreciate already that the Desto3 team members are for the most part cultural and historical philistines. We therefore perhaps lacked the committee’s requisite appreciation for all the usual claptrap that typically draws their attention.
Suffice to say, the confines of the tiny town of San Marino contain sufficient well preserved structural testament to European history. To mention but a few: a museum dedicated exclusively to torture, AND a Museum of Ancient Weapons. (Unbelievably these are exclusive attractions.) More than enough sacred sites, (including no fewer than 6 consecrated churches and 2 additional Basilicas, each one honoring a different celebrity-saint). The minimum quota of grand towers (3), which for a fee you can climb, but, watch your head. An actual changing of the guard replete with garishly uniformed pompous young men undoubtedly born to the job. In short, enough of each category to excite even the most devoted Roman Catholic, or the most dedicated pasty historian, or, the biggest admirer of shrines to man’s inhumanity to man, or any combination of the three.
Perhaps, (to make up for the tardy honors?) the WHC perseverates: “San Marino is an exceptional testimony to a living cultural tradition that has persisted over the last seven hundred years.”
All this to say that for seven centuries the world’s oldest Republic, surrounded on all sides, has nevertheless managed to maintain, not only sovereignty, but also a palpable superiority (and the attendant airs) over their only border neighbors, the lowly Italians. Impressive as it might seem that these, (by regional reputation), “hearty” folk managed to avoid assimilation for over seven centuries, I, for one, am not that quick to credit the Marinese with extraordinary resolve. One needs only to take the one hour bus ride (UP, way up), from the coastal resort town of Rimini, (notably fancied greatly by none other than Signor Frederico Fellini), to understand how this fete of independence may have had more to do with a simple accident of geography, (and no doubt also the somewhat somnolent nature of the Italians, who everybody knows would rather eat and make love than make war – the paid foreign mercenaries of the Roman Empire notwithstanding).
Simply put, the location of San Marino, high atop Mt. Titano’s forbidding, rocky and steeply rising 2,425 ft. elevation made it perfect for what it is…an ideal locale for a prison, a sanctuary for smugglers, (even in modern times), and a place the Italians could give a pass to, seemingly into eternity. (Who gives as a gift two canons to a country that could only fire canon balls to the gift giver? One surmises that when the Italian government dragged these nasty armaments up the mountain and presented them as presents they assumed that the Marinese weren’t going to shoot canon balls down the mountain onto the benevolent.)
In addition to this arguably lurid and bloody history, currently San Marino remains a haven for gun-runners and purveyors of fine Italian leather-ware or what I like to call, Death-and-Handbags-R-Us. For every cute little shop in town packed floor to ceiling with the latest in Gucci and Luis Vuitton, (and there are about a hundred of them in just two square miles), there’s a partner store selling every kind of firepower an NRA member could covet. It’s Wayne La Pierre’s wet dream up there, but the shop-keeps claim that they do not sell ammunition and the automatic rifles and Glocks are “just for war simulation games”. Sure, dude. And I still weigh what it says on my California drivers license, too. But, whatever. Pablo inquired within but he wouldn’t let me go inside, fearing that where I can occasionally exercise a modicum of restraint when it comes to immigration reform, on the gun nut issue, I’m likely to lose my shit and tear somebody a new one. No international incidents for P.
It made me super sad though to think of where all those guns are going to wind up and who they’re likely to kill, and who doesn’t care one whit about that mayhem as long as they can pocket their dirty blood money. For that reason alone, you can say I’m not a fan of San Marino. It would seem as though the place is nothing more than a gross shrine to crass commercial consumerism and gun nuttery.
I guess there are worse “Republics” on #3, but I can’t name one. Oh, wait, never mind…
