San Marino, officially the
Republic of San Marino (Italian: Repubblica di San Marino), also
known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino (Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a
country in Southern Europe, on the
northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains,
completely surrounded by Italy. San Marino covers a land area of just
over 61 km2. Its capital is the City of San Marino and its
largest settlement is Dogana in the municipality of Serravalle. San Marino has
the smallest population of any member of the Council of Europe. The official language is Italian, and San Marino maintains strong financial and
ethno-cultural connections to its much larger neighbour. It is located close to
the riviera of Rimini, one of Italy's main coastal resort
areas.
The country derives its
name from Saint Marinus, a stonemason from the Roman colony on the island of Rab,
in modern-day Croatia. In AD 257, Marinus, according to legend, participated
in the reconstruction of Rimini's city walls after their
destruction by Liburnian pirates. Marinus then went on to found an independent monastic
community on Monte Titano in AD 301; thus, San Marino
lays claim to be the oldest extant sovereign state as well as the oldest
constitutional republic. San Marino is governed by its constitution, the Leges Statutae Republicae
Sancti Marini, which is a series of six books written in Latin
in the late 16th century, that dictate the country's political system among
other matters. San Marino is considered to have the earliest written governing
documents still in effect.
The postal history of San Marino can be traced to October 7, 1607, with the
introduction of public postal services. The republic's postal needs were
handled by a post office in nearby Rimini, Italy; the first San Marino post office opened
in 1833 . When postage stamps were introduced in the mid-19th century, San
Marino signed a postal treaty with Italy to use Italian stamps for its mail. On March 2, 1877, a new agreement was signed
between the two countries that enabled San Marino to issue its own stamps. The
first San Marino postage stamps were a definitive stamps consisting of two designs covering seven denominations. The
stamps, which depicted the coat of arms of the republic
with the Three Towers of San Marino
at Monte Titano (except the 2-centesimi stamp), were created by
the design firm Fratelli Pellas in Genoa and printed on Italian watermarked paper
by the Officina Carta e Valori in Turin. The first Commemorative stamps were
introduced in 1894.
Over the years, the
attractive designs of San Marino's stamps have been extremely popular with
philatelists around the world. It is estimated that 10% of the republic's
revenue is generated by the sale of its postage stamps to international
collectors. The government of San Marino has the world's only philatelic
minister of state, Simone Celli, who carries the title (in Italian) La
Segreteria di Stato per le finanze, il bilancio e la programmazione,
l'informazione, i rapporti con l'azienda autonoma di stato filatelica e
numismatica (State Secretariat for Finance, Budget and Planning, Information,
Relations with the Autonomous Philatelic and Numismatic Company).
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