Despite warning on the “Beast from the East” in the news, after a lucky day in Urbino, I decided to take a gamble to visit nearby another World Heritage Site, the small Republic of San Marino. After I left Urbino, it was snowing heavily for the whole evening, fortunately I reached my hotel in San Marino safe and sound after 4 hours for short distance in such severe weather. I only hoped that the snow will stop tomorrow morning. It was snowing for whole night and still continued for the next day. I waited and waited until snow seem to be OK to walk outside. The whole country was under the snow and seem to be shut down as nobody on the streets and all the shops were closed, only government office still opened.

I walked alone in the “winter wonderland” of snow and ice capital of San Marino. Many roads and pathway were full with snow. I tried to walk to the famous Mount Titano and San Marino’s well known towers, despite the sites were opened, the pathways to reach those attractions were almost inaccessible unless you were equipped with ski gear! The snow was so high that it reached my knees! I walked to tourism center to get the cheeky 5 Euro souvenir visa stamp on my passport, saw Basilica and the tiny parliament. After twice slipped and fell from the snow, I decided to stop and carefully walked back to the hotel. To be honest I was quite disappointed with San Marino, I did not see anything special in the city in terms of architecture or fortifications, it was quite similar to other old town in this region but the city looked more modern than I original thought. With some help of hotel staffs to clear snow from my car, I quickly left San Marino to Ravenna, at least I heard there was no snow in Ravenna to trouble my travel.   

Since I had no chance to see those famous fortifications of San Marino, I could not say much about this World Heritage Site, but for the historic town alone, I did not think it was worthwhile to explore, there was nothing much to see, there were a nice basilica and fine public buildings but nothing remarkable. The main characteristic of San Marino heavily relied on its location, driving to the old town via its many hairpin turns were quite challenging but gave an idea of this urban topography. Anyway San Marino has been inscribed by criteria III for its unique history of republic, so to rate it on visual architecture only maybe not a correct way to justify this site.