What the inscription says
The official motivation of the inscription describes San Marino as a testimony of the continuity of a free republic since the Middle Ages. The site extends for 55 hectares, including Mount Titano and the historic centre of the city, which dates back to the foundation of the Republic as a city-state in the thirteenth century. The inscription recognises the exceptional value of the urban landscape and the permanence of the original institutional functions inside the same physical structures.
«The inscribed historic centre includes fortification towers, walls, gates and bastions, in addition to a neoclassical basilica of the nineteenth century, convents of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the nineteenth-century Public Palace and the eighteenth-century Titano Theatre. The property represents a still-inhabited historic centre that preserves all its institutional functions.»
UNESCO underlines that thanks to the position on top of Mount Titano, the historic centre has not been affected by the urban transformations that have modified many Italian towns from the advent of the industrial era onwards. The stratigraphy of the buildings, the network of streets, the balance between built area and landscape have remained legible in their late-medieval and Renaissance setting.
Criterion iii
The inscription is motivated on criterion iii of the 1972 UNESCO Convention: "to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilisation which is living or which has disappeared". San Marino is the only still-existing medieval city-state of northern Italy, and represents an important stage in the development of democratic models of good governance in Europe and in the world. The site is evaluated as authentically preserved in its functions, and not only in its materiality.
The Historic Centre has maintained its geopolitical context with boundaries unchanged since 1463, the year of the war against the Malatesta of Rimini and of the definition of the nine Castelli. The exceptional civic history is testified by the functional authenticity of public monuments, urban spaces and the historic landscape of Mount Titano.
The inscribed elements
| Element | Era | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Three Towers | 11th-14th c. | Medieval defensive system |
| Walls, gates and bastions | 13th-16th c. | Fortified urban perimeter |
| Public Palace | 1884-1894 | Institutional seat |
| Basilica of Saint Marinus | 1855 | Main religious building |
| Convents of St. Francis and St. Clare | 14th-17th c. | Female and male religious buildings |
| Titano Theatre | 18th c. | Historic theatre hall |
| Mount Titano | Geological formation | Inscribed orographic landscape |
From territory to historic centre
The initial nomination, presented at the end of the 1990s, proposed the inscription of the entire territory of the Republic. The procedure was revised during the technical examination: in 2008 only the historic centre of the City of San Marino and Mount Titano were approved, considered more aligned with the criteria of exceptional universal value. A significant subtext of the site is the fact that the fundamental institutions of the Republic (Regency, Great and General Council, judicial organs) continue to operate in the same physical seats inscribed in the heritage.
Squares, theatres, library
Churches, palaces and squares of great beauty are not lacking, such as Piazza della Libertà, from which opens the view over the valley and onto which faces the Public Palace. The state museums allow further exploration of the history of San Marino, starting with the State Museum in Piazzetta del Titano.
Alongside the museum institutions, the State Library, the State Archives, theatres such as the ancient Titano Theatre, and the State University born in 1985 in the seat of the former Monastery of St. Clare, compose the living cultural fabric of the site. The starting point for the visit remains the sequence of the Three Towers, iconographic symbol of the Republic since the national coat of arms.
The complete history of the formation of the community, the passage from the Middle Ages to the modern age and the key moments up to the present day are treated in the pages Middle Ages, Statutes and Novecento. The context of the UNESCO declaration takes up and synthesises this continuity.