Monte Titano is a limestone ridge of 739 metres rising out of the hills of Romagna in the Republic of San Marino, with a tower on each of its three summits, and the three towers are the emblem on the flag of the oldest republic in the world, walked along the bare crest between them with the Adriatic and the plain below. The mountain does not match the clay hills around it: it is a block of limestone that slid here from the Apennines and came to rest on the softer ground, which is why it stands alone, and the republic has held its summit since a stonecutter named Marinus founded a community on it in 301, never conquered in seventeen centuries; the first tower, Guaita, was begun in the eleventh century and rebuilt during the wars with the Malatesta lords of Rimini, entered through a gate in its outer wall and climbed to open ramparts, and the second, Cesta, stands on the highest of the three peaks on the footings of an older fort and holds a collection of more than 1,500 medieval weapons. The third, Montale, is closed.
Between Guaita and Cesta the Passo delle Streghe, the witches' pass, runs the crest as a stone ledge with the cliff falling away on either side, the old guards' route, and paragliders work the air off the ridge and come by level with the battlements, close enough to make out the harness, before spiralling down toward the fields. On cold still mornings the plain below drowns in fog while the ridge stays in sunlight and the towers stand on an island of limestone above a white sea. On the coat of arms each tower is topped with a silver ostrich plume, and the three green hills beneath them are the summits underfoot; the old town runs along the ridge below them, a UNESCO site of stone lanes in a country of 33,000 people. Monte Titano is a mountain that is a country, and the three towers are its signature.