🇸🇲San Marino

There is no border

• San Marino is entirely surrounded by Italy and there are no border controls of any kind.
• You drive or ride in and a sign tells you you have changed country.
• It is not in the EU and not in Schengen, but since Italy is both, and Italy is the only way in, Italian rules govern in practice.
• Your Schengen 90/180 keeps running while you are here.

The passport stamp

• The tourist office in the City of San Marino will stamp your passport for a small fee.
• It is a souvenir with no legal effect. No official anywhere will treat it as an entry record.
• It is also, for many visitors, the point.

Practicalities

• Carry your passport or ID card.
• There is no customs check on the way out, unlike Andorra - San Marino is inside Italy's customs area for most purposes.

• There is no border post with Italy and no passport check, which makes it easy to forget that San Marino is a separate customs and tax jurisdiction.
• It is in a customs union with the EU, so industrial goods move freely, but it is outside the EU VAT area and charges its own single-stage tax instead.
• Prices on electronics, perfume and tobacco are lower for that reason, and bringing goods back into Italy is formally an import from outside the VAT area.
• The EU third-country allowances are the ones to keep in mind if you are buying in quantity: 200 cigarettes, 1 litre of spirits, EUR 300 of other goods by land.
• Cash of EUR 10,000 or more is declarable when crossing into the EU, the same rule as any other external arrival.

Autumn is the wet season here, not winter

The Italian-summer picture most people carry into a trip to San Marino is half right. July and August are dry - 40 and 57 mm - and July, at 28 C, is the only month above the comfortable band. What surprises people is the other end: September, October and November take 83, 95 and 100 mm, the three wettest months of the year, and December still takes 86.

So the shape of the year is a dry, hot midsummer with the rain stacked either side of it and weighted heavily to the autumn. May, June and August to October average 18-27 C by day and are what this page picks; May and June, at 82 and 50 mm, are the drier half of that.

A ridge, not a plain

San Marino's historic centre stands on top of Monte Titano, above the plain it looks out over toward the Adriatic. That is the whole explanation for two things a visitor notices.

The first is that it is cooler and windier than the coast a short drive away - the same afternoon that is still and hot in Rimini can be moving air on the ridge. The second is cloud: a ridge standing above a plain catches low cloud that the plain never sees, so the view that is the reason to come can be inside the weather rather than above it. Autumn, the wet season, is when that is most likely.

If the view matters more than the temperature, the dry midsummer is the safer bet despite the 28 C.

The bill depends on which network you land on

• San Marino is not in the EU or the EEA, so roam-like-at-home does not cover it.
• The Republic is entirely surrounded by Italy, and Italian networks reach well into it. A phone holding an Italian network is roaming in Italy, at your EU rate.
• A phone that switches to San Marino's own network is not, and an operator that bills San Marino separately will bill it separately.
• This can change while you stand still, which is what makes it worth knowing rather than merely trivia.

What to actually do

• Check whether your tariff lists San Marino before you go up. Some operators fold it into their Europe zone; others treat it as rest-of-world.
• If yours does not cover it, set the network manually to an Italian one while you are there, or turn data roaming off.
• A day trip needs no SIM at all. Most people come up from Rimini for the afternoon.

Free public wi-fi, and it is genuinely good

• VisitSanMarinoWiFi covers the Republic from 300 access points, in the historic centre, squares, museums, libraries and public offices.
• It is free and needs no registration - you connect and you are online, at any hour.
• On a short visit this is enough to make the whole roaming question moot.

eSIM

• An eSIM is live before you land and skips the shop entirely, which on a short trip is the whole argument for it.
• Check your phone takes one. Most flagship phones since 2019 do; most budget models do not.

Practical points

• Keep your home number reachable for two-factor codes. If you swap in a local SIM as your only card, bank apps that text a code to your home number stop working at the worst possible moment. A dual-SIM phone, or an eSIM alongside your home SIM, solves it.
• Wi-fi is widespread in cafes, hotels and stations.

Sockets in San Marino are Type C, F and L at 230 V, 50 Hz - the Italian arrangement, since everything here comes through Italy.

• Type L is the three-in-line Italian socket, with the earth in the middle, in a 10 A and a 16 A gauge that do not fit each other.
• The bipasso outlet takes both gauges and a Europlug, which is what most modern rooms have.
• A Schuko plug needs the larger Italian outlet or an adapter.
• British, American and Australian plugs need an adapter.
• 230 V, so only American 120 V-only equipment needs a converter.
• Italy surrounds the country on every side, so anything bought in Rimini works here and nothing else needs to.

Italian in practice

• Italian is the language and Sammarinese life is Italian life with a different flag.
• English is spoken in the tourist centre, less so below it.
• 230 V, 50 Hz, sockets type C, F and L - the Italian three-in-line plug (type L) appears alongside the round European ones, so an adapter is worth having.

The republic

• San Marino claims to be the oldest surviving republic in the world, founded in 301, and takes the claim seriously.
• Two Captains Regent serve as joint heads of state for six months at a time, a system running since the 13th century.
• The three towers on the ridge are the national symbol and the walk between them is the thing to do.

Practicalities

• The old town is steep and cobbled. Wear something sensible on your feet.
• It is a day trip for almost everyone, and it empties in the evening when the coaches leave - which, as in Mostar, is an argument for staying the night.
• Weather on the ridge is different from the coast - it is 700 m up and can be in cloud when Rimini is in sun.

The currency

• San Marino uses the euro under a monetary agreement with the EU and mints its own coins.
• Sammarinese euro coins are collectors' items and are minted in small numbers - you will not get one in change, they are sold in sets.
• Postage stamps are the other collecting tradition and the philatelic office is a genuine attraction for those who care.

Prices

• Prices are broadly Italian, with a tourist premium in the old town.
• VAT works differently - San Marino has its own import tax rather than Italian VAT - which historically made electronics and jewellery cheaper. The gap is much smaller now than the shopfronts suggest.

ATMs

• Always refuse the machine's offer to charge you in your own currency. Dynamic currency conversion at an ATM or a card terminal costs several per cent, every time, and the offer is worded to sound helpful. Choose the local currency and let your own bank convert.
• Use bank ATMs rather than the independent machines in tourist areas, which add their own fee on top.

Italian driving rules on a mountain, no tolls, and a historic centre you cannot drive into.

• The old town on Monte Titano is closed to traffic. Park in the numbered car parks below and take the cable car or the lifts.
• There are no tolls in the republic, and the Italian autostrada that brings you here is tolled to the Rimini exit.
• Italian rules apply in practice, including the 0.5 g/l alcohol limit.
• The approach road climbs 700 m in a few kilometres of hairpins - not difficult, but slow in a queue on a summer Saturday.
• Border formalities do not exist - there is no check between Italy and San Marino, and a hire car crosses freely.
• Fuel is slightly cheaper than in Italy, which is why the stations on the approach road are busy.

The numbers

• 112 works from any phone, free, with no credit and no SIM, and operators handle English.

If you need help

• Report a theft to the police and get a written record. No insurer will pay a claim without one, and obtaining it later from another country is close to impossible.
• A lost passport means the police first, then your embassy.
• Your embassy cannot pay your bills or get you out of jail, but it can issue emergency travel documents, contact your family and provide lists of local lawyers and doctors.

Before you need them

• Save 112 in your phone now, and write your accommodation's address somewhere that does not depend on a charged battery.

• Not every country keeps an embassy in San Marino. Several cover it from a neighbouring capital - check yours before you need to know.

• The numbers match Italy's, which is what you would expect given the geography.

• Italy is the only country with a resident embassy in San Marino, on Viale Antonio Onofri, opened in 2007. Every other state accredits its ambassador from Rome, so consular assistance for the rest of us comes from Rome or from a consulate in Florence or Bologna.