Plan the visit
- Where
- Piazza della Libertà · City of San Marino
- Admission
- State Museums ticket · tariffs on museidistato.sm
- Ceremonies
- Changing of the Fortress Guard · Captains Regent investiture (1 Apr / 1 Oct)
- Visit duration
- 45 minutes · 1 hour
Where the ancient Domus stood
The Public Palace rises on the so-called "Pianello", the flat area today corresponding to Piazza della Libertà. Here, between 1380 and 1392, the Domus Comunis Magna was built, the first permanent seat of the Sammarinese government, enlarged and repaired several times in the following centuries. By the second half of the nineteenth century the building, by then known as Palazzo Vecchio, showed a seventeenth-century appearance but required ever more costly works to adapt to the new administrative functions of the Republic.
In 1883 the Great and General Council approved complete demolition and rebuilding from scratch. The project was entrusted to Francesco Azzurri, Roman architect and president of the Accademia di San Luca. The first stone of the new Palace was laid on 17 May 1884. The yard was directed by Sammarinese master builder Giuseppe Reffi, who employed local stonemasons and sandstone quarried from the Titano.
30 September 1894
The inauguration took place on 30 September 1894 in the presence of Italian authorities and the accredited diplomatic corps. The official orator of the ceremony was Giosuè Carducci, who delivered a celebrated speech on the "perpetual liberty" of the Republic, praising the unbroken independence of the Titano as a model for liberal Europe. The text of the speech is still today one of the most cited documents of Italian Risorgimento rhetoric.
«You have lived perpetual liberty when the liberty of Europe was not yet born; you have kept it when all around it was dying.»
Three arches and a tower
The Neo-Gothic facade is richly decorated: three pointed arches support the noble floor, at the centre of which a polygonal balcony stands flanked by two ornate windows. Among the small mezzanine windows stands the Coat of Arms of the Republic, alongside the coats of arms of the Castelli of Serravalle, Fiorentino, Montegiardino and Faetano and other icons of minor places acquired over the centuries. On the left side rises the crenellated bell tower, bearing the images of Saint Agatha, Saint Marinus and Saint Leo beneath the civic clock.
At the corner, on the mezzanine level, a bronze statue of the Saint founder watches over Piazza della Libertà. Under the portico, on the right, stands the marble bust of architect Azzurri, by Giulio Tadolini. The square itself, called "the Pianello", is dominated by the Statue of Liberty donated in 1876 by German countess Otilia Heyroth-Wagener, one of the most photographed symbols of the chief town.
-
01.
Hall of the Council
Upper floor, monumental staircase. Sixty seats since 1848 for the parliamentarians of the Republic.
-
02.
Congress Hall
Meeting room of the State Congress, the executive body formed by the Secretaries of State.
-
03.
Audience Hall
Space dedicated to official audiences of the Captains Regent with citizens and foreign delegations.
-
04.
Ballot Hall
Seat of the voting and counting operations of elections and direct-democracy referendums.
The motto of Marinus
Inside, the walls of the entrance hall are covered with trophies, inscriptions, coats of arms, friezes, busts of illustrious men who have marked the history of the country, including Giosuè Carducci. The monumental staircase leads to the upper floor, where the Hall of the Great and General Council opens. Sixty seats await the parliamentarians since 1848, the date of the constitutional reform that fixed the present number of councillors.
On the back wall of the chamber, a large depiction of the Saint founder surrounded by his people dominates the room. Peasants, soldiers, scholars, women and youths listen to Marinus as he utters the famous warning: "Relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine", "I leave you free from both men", alluding to the Pope and the Emperor. It is the founding declaration of Sammarinese independence, repeated also in the Basilica of Saint Marinus.
A century later
After almost a century of continuous activity, in the early 1990s the Palace was subjected to a radical restoration to adapt it to new requirements of safety, accessibility and functionality. The commission went to Gae Aulenti, an internationally renowned architect known for the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and Palazzo Grassi in Venice. The solemn inauguration of the restored Palace took place on 30 September 1996, exactly one hundred years after the Carducci ceremony, with the Regency in office in attendance.
Those who wish to explore the institutional context of the building may consult the page on the institutions of San Marino and the one on the Captains Regent. The Palace is part of the site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2008.