Rimini and San Marino in photos

Anyone who knows me is probably familiar with my slight obsession with castles. I love visiting castles, I want to live in a castle, when I'm older I want to be a castle. As such, I took a few too many photos of San Marino's pièce de resistance, and thought they deserved their own blog post, along with Rimini's Roman ruins.

View from Ponte di Tiberio, Rimini

Arco di Augusto, Rimini

Ponte di Tiberio, Rimini

A street in Rimini with Balamory-style pastel-coloured houses, all covered in amazing chalk(?) art

 

The main government building in San Marino

View from the climb to the top of San Marino city

Entrance to the tower

The first tower

At the top of the tower

View of the second tower from the first

I like the Narnia-style lamppost in the last picture because in some ways San Marino reminded me of a real life Narnia (which was actually named after an Italian town). It's difficult to reach, with the lack of train station meaning you either have to drive or get a bus from an Italian city, usually Rimini, and once you get past the touristy restaurants and gift shops and arrive at the towers, it feels like you've stepped out of Italy and arrived in a different world. 

Obviously it is a country unto itself, but that's not it. San Marino is by no means backward, with one of the most stable economies and highest GDP per capita in the world today, a university, football team, and unusually high life expectancy for its population. All the same, it's hard to reconcile its status as a modern European state with the fairytale images of the castle and sprawling postcard perfect landscapes, which help it retain something of a peaceful, medieval atmosphere.