San Marino Trivia
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49 free San Marino trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Forty-four questions on San Marino, the tiny republic on Monte Titano that has out-lasted every empire around it. Geography covers the 61 square kilometres surrounded by Italy, the nine castelli, Dogana and Serravalle, the cable car and the Adriatic view. History runs from the stonemason Marinus fleeing Rab in 301, through Cesare Borgia's occupation, the fog that saved the republic in 1543, Cardinal Alberoni, Napoleon's declined offer of land, Garibaldi's refuge, Lincoln's honorary citizenship, the fascist years, the mistaken Allied bombing of 1944 and the communist-socialist coalition of 1945-57. Government and culture rounds cover the two Captains Regent elected every six months, the Statutes of 1600, the Grand and General Council, the Crossbow Corps, the euro without EU membership, the stamps that fund the treasury, the Torta Tre Monti, the Three Towers on the flag, Valentina Monetta at Eurovision, the first Olympic medals in Tokyo, Imola's Grand Prix and Davide Gualtieri's 8.3-second goal against England. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the republic, its institutions and people, and the sentence that establishes it is quoted under each explanation. Suits a pub quiz, a European geography class or a day trip from Rimini.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Like San Marino, which of these countries is entirely surrounded by one other country?
Lesotho
Lesotho lies wholly inside South Africa, as San Marino lies inside its one neighbour. Its king asked for British protection in 1868 to keep Boer settlers from swallowing the mountain kingdom.
Q 02Which of these countries is even smaller in area than San Marino?
Nauru
Nauru covers about 21 square kilometres, a third of San Marino's 61. A century of phosphate mining stripped most of the Pacific island's interior, leaving only a narrow fertile belt around the coast.
Q 03The capital, the City of San Marino, sits atop which mountain?
Monte Titano
Monte Titano was, by legend, a gift: a wealthy woman is said to have given the mountain to the stonemason Marinus after he healed her son.
Q 04San Marino's largest settlement is not the capital but which border town?
Dogana
Dogana, whose name means 'customs house', has about 7,000 residents. In 2006 it asked to become a municipality in its own right, and the request was turned down.
Q 05The stonemason saint who gave San Marino its name came, by tradition, from an island in which present-day country?
Croatia
Croatia's island of Rab was his home. He is said to have crossed the Adriatic to help rebuild a coastal city's walls, then climbed the mountain to escape the persecution of Christians.
Q 06San Marino's national holiday, 3 September, marks what?
The founding by Saint Marinus in 301
The founding by Saint Marinus in 301 is tradition rather than record: 3 September is his feast day, and the first written trace of a community on the mountain comes centuries later.
Q 07Which of these has San Marino kept unchanged since 1463?
Its borders
Its borders took their present shape when the pope rewarded San Marino with Fiorentino, Montegiardino and Serravalle for joining an alliance against a neighbouring lord, and Faetano was added in 1463.
Q 08Which Renaissance warlord seized San Marino in 1503, only to lose it months later when his father died?
Cesare Borgia
Cesare Borgia held the republic for about six months. When his father, Pope Alexander VI, died, the hostile new pope Julius II forced him out and San Marino was free again.
Q 09A 1543 attempt to conquer San Marino failed when the invading army did what?
Got lost in dense fog
Got lost in dense fog, the story goes, on 4 June 1543, the feast of Saint Quirinus; the grateful Sammarinesi made his day a holiday and built him a church.
Q 10Which Sicilian martyr became San Marino's co-patron after a papal occupation ended on her feast day in 1740?
Saint Agatha
Saint Agatha's feast, 5 February, was the day in 1740 that a papal envoy ended Cardinal Alberoni's occupation, so the grateful republic adopted Catania's patron as its own.
Q 11In 1797 Napoleon offered San Marino what, which its regents politely declined?
Extra territory
Extra territory was offered through Napoleon's envoy. On Antonio Onofri's advice the regents said no, wary of claims their neighbours might make later, and accepted only a gift of grain.
Q 12Which Italian unification hero took refuge in San Marino in 1849 with Austrian troops in pursuit?
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi asked the republic for asylum, disbanded his army there, then slipped away by night with his closest followers and escaped the Austrians.
Q 13Which US president accepted honorary citizenship of San Marino, calling it 'one of the most honored' states in history?
Q 21What are San Marino's nine municipalities called?
Castelli
Castelli, literally 'castles': the word first labelled the fortified communities won from the Malatesta family, and it outlived the fortresses to name all nine local councils.
Q 22Paolo Rondelli became a San Marino Captain Regent in 2022, making him the world's first what?
Openly gay head of state
Openly gay head of state: Rondelli, 58 and a former ambassador to the United States, took office in a republic where homosexuality could still be punished with jail until 2004.
Q 23Which medieval weapon does San Marino's oldest military corps still shoot at festivals?
Crossbows
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln wrote back in May 1861, weeks into the Civil War, to accept the regents' offer; the State Department counts that letter as America's recognition of San Marino.
Q 14In 1865 San Marino became the first country in Europe to do away with what entirely?
The death penalty
The death penalty went for good in 1865, two years after Venezuela led the world. By then San Marino had not carried out an execution for centuries.
Q 15Why did Allied aircraft bomb neutral San Marino on 26 June 1944?
Germans were thought to hold it
Germans were thought to hold it and to be storing arms there. The intelligence was wrong, as Britain later admitted, and the raid killed about 60 people in a state sheltering 100,000 refugees.
Q 16Which kind of coalition won San Marino's 1945 election and governed until 1957?
Communist-socialist
Communist-socialist: the alliance governed for twelve years, until it lost its majority in 1957 and its opponents set up a rival government in an abandoned factory at Rovereta.
Q 17When San Marino's two heads of state finish their six-month term, what may any citizen then do?
File a complaint against them
File a complaint against them: since 1499 every outgoing pair has faced this review, over what they did and what they failed to do, and it can end in proceedings against a former head of state.
Q 18In 1243, San Marino's first recorded pair of joint leaders held which title, borrowed from ancient Rome?
Consuls
Consuls is what a document of 1243 calls them. As in Rome, two shared the office for a short term, because the republic feared leaving power in one man's hands for long.
Q 19The six Latin books known as the Statutes of 1600 still serve as the core of San Marino's what?
Constitution
Constitution: San Marino has no single modern charter, so rules set down in the old Latin books, such as the six-month rotation of its two heads of state, still bind the republic.
Q 20What is San Marino's 60-seat parliament called?
Grand and General Council
Grand and General Council members took over from the Arengo, the gathering of every family head, once the population grew too large for all of them to meet.
Crossbows once defended the city walls. The corps lives on as a troupe of volunteers in medieval dress, shooting in contests with flag-throwers and drummers at its side.
Q 24Which of these non-EU countries, like San Marino, mints its own euro coins?
Monaco
Monaco, like San Marino, Andorra and Vatican City, signed a monetary agreement with the EU that lets it strike a limited number of euro coins with its own design; Liechtenstein uses the Swiss franc.
Q 25Before the euro, San Marino's currency was what?
The Sammarinese lira
The Sammarinese lira was pegged one-to-one to Italy's, so Italian notes did most of the everyday work beside San Marino's own coins until both gave way to the euro in 2002.
Q 26San Marino's postage stamps, first issued in 1877, are mostly sold to whom?
Philatelists
Philatelists around the world buy most of them: stamp sales were already earning the republic 'a considerable income' by 1911 and still help to fund the state.
Q 27San Marino claims the world's highest rate of what, at about 1.6 per person?
Car ownership
Car ownership: about 54,000 vehicles are registered for fewer than 34,000 residents, a surplus put down to the republic's wealth and its lower taxes on cars.
Q 28Which goods does Italy supply to San Marino each year at cost under a treaty?
Salt, tobacco, cigarettes and matches
Salt, tobacco, cigarettes and matches come under a treaty in which San Marino agreed not to grow tobacco of its own; Italy also pays the republic an annual subsidy in return.
Q 29Roughly how many tourists visited San Marino in 2014, versus a population near 34,000?
About 2 million
About 2 million, and none of them met a passport check on the way in: visitors who want a souvenir of the crossing pay the tourist office a small fee for a stamp.
Q 30San Marino's Funivia cable car links the capital with which town below?
Borgo Maggiore
Borgo Maggiore, long the republic's market town, sits at the foot of the cliff; since 1959 a cable car has spared visitors the hairpin bends up to the walled capital.