Guaita Tower
The Guaita is the first of the three towers on the ridge of Mount Titano and the oldest, built in the eleventh century straight out of the rock, and for most of its life it was a prison; now it is the postcard of the oldest republic on Earth. From its walls the ridge runs south to the Cesta, the highest tower, at seven hundred and fifty-six metres, and beyond it to the Montale, the third, closed and small, and on clear days the Adriatic is a line of silver twenty kilometres to the east. Below the towers the Città climbs in steps of pale stone — the Palazzo Pubblico, the basilica, the shops that sell everything the surrounding country taxes — and at the foot of the mountain Borgo Maggiore keeps the market and the cable car that does the climb in two minutes.
The traveller comes up by the funivia from Borgo Maggiore for the drama of the arrival; walks to the Guaita and climbs it for the view over the whole republic — all sixty-one square kilometres of it — and the swifts wheeling off the cliff; takes the Passo delle Streghe, the Witches' Pass, along the ridge to the Cesta and its museum of ancient arms; walks on to the Montale for the horizon and comes back; watches the changing of the guard on the Piazza della Libertà in summer; eats a piadina and buys nothing at all, or a stamp; and stays for the evening, when the coaches have gone down and the towers are lit and the mountain is nearly empty.
The Guide's honesty: San Marino is a real country and a real day-trip, and between eleven and four in summer it feels more like the second — come early, or sleep here, which almost nobody does —; the towers charge a combined ticket that is fair; the Passo delle Streghe has drops on the east side and no railings in places — mind children and wind —; the duty-free shops are the republic's other industry and no one will judge you; the funivia is the way up and the way to see the wall from below; and the republic issues its own euro coins and stamps and offers a passport stamp at the tourist office, which is optional, three euros, and the only frontier this country has.