San Leo #1of3

Explanation: —

The following story is also found in Chapter 7 of our book, Invitation To Italy. Several years before the book was published, this story was presented on an Internet Site. Since that time, the man who ran the site has died, so here it as three Tidbits.
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Writing About Little Towns

Long before we started this book about Italy, we both knew it would be difficult, but fun to write. We have enjoyed Italy so much, but no guide book or travelogue even comes close to telling the story of how fascinating travel in Italy really is. It's one thing to describe well known cities like Milan, Genoa, and even Venice, but these little hillside and hilltop villages are just so special, and thousands of them don't appear in your guide book. Perhaps writing about San Leo demonstrates that point. Our 100 year old Baedeker's doesn't mention San Leo, and our Michelin Guide has a few words as a footnote to San Marino. So if we are able to describe the approach road, the town square, the two churches, that still leaves the problem of relating the thrill of visiting such a place.

First Visit to San Leo

The weather was gorgeous as we left San Marino for our first visit to San Leo, about 20 miles away. At a red light I asked the San Marinese police lady if we were headed in the right direction, and of course we couldn't understand each other in spite of all the hand signals. Another cop looked at the license plate, then rattled off a sentence or two of German. They both burst out in laughter when I managed to inform them, 'The vehicle license plate is German, the passengers are Californians!

The first time we came to San Leo, we stopped and admired the castle high on the tip of the mountain, and looked in horror at the road cut as a niche in the side of a cliff, that seemed to lead into town. As we studied further, we saw that indeed the cliff-hanger road went the right direction, then we watched as a car made a right turn and seemed to disappear into a hole in the cliff. Well, we are adventurous, and we have driven places where we wished we hadn't ventured, but we decided that as enticing as the castle looked from the distance, we weren't foolish enough to drive our RV to San Leo. We sat and watched other automobiles disappear into what we thought must be San Leo, then went on our way. We knew San Leo had been mentioned in Dante's 'La Divina Commedia,' but it looked as if the road into the village, belonged in the section called 'Inferno.'