Monte Titano is made of the wrong rock. The 739-metre ridge is hard limestone standing in a country of soft clay hills, ten kilometres from the Adriatic — a piece of old seabed that arrived here from somewhere else. Each of its three summits carries a tower: Guaita, first raised in the 11th century, Cesta on the highest peak, and the slender Montale, with walls running between them along the cliff edge. The towers stand for the state itself. San Marino draws all three on its flag and coat of arms, and has governed itself from this ridge for seventeen centuries as the world's oldest surviving republic, founded by tradition in 301 by a stonecutter from the Dalmatian island of Rab. Its motto is one word, Libertas: Garibaldi and some 2,000 followers were given asylum here in 1849, and in 1944 a neutral republic of 14,500 people took in more than 100,000 Italians fleeing the front. UNESCO inscribed the mountain and the old town in 2008.
The walk along the spine is the reason to come. From Guaita's ramparts a paved crest path, the Passo delle Streghe, threads across to Cesta with the ground dropping away on both sides; the wind funnels through it and whistles, which is how it earned its name — the Witches' Pass. Cesta, on the highest point, keeps more than 1,500 medieval weapons; Montale has never opened its door to visitors, so you circle it and turn back. Below, the Romagna plain runs flat to the coast, and on clear days the Adriatic shows as a bright line. In the cold months that plain drowns in fog and the towers are left standing on an island above it. At sunset the limestone turns honey-coloured and the lights of Rimini come on far below.