Flag of San Marino

How to read it

Article 2-bis of San Marino’s Declaration of the Rights of Citizens and Fundamental Principles (Law 59 of 8 July 1974), added by the constitutional law of 22 July 2011 and rewritten on 26 September 2025 to name the anthem as well, says the flag is two fields divided horizontally, white above and blue below, with the official coat of arms in the centre. The arms are crowned with a closed crown, the symbol of sovereignty. The shield is blue with three green mountains and three silver towers, their windows and battlements picked out in black, topped with silver ostrich plumes; under it are two crossed green branches, one of laurel and one of oak, fruited in gold, and on a silver ribbon the motto LIBERTAS in black capitals. San Marino’s government says the flag was adopted on 6 April 1862 and slightly changed in 2011, and that it is 3 by 4, with the more usual 2 by 3 allowed for international use and sport.

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One flag, with the arms

The flag with the arms is the only one, both the national flag and the state flag, San Marino’s government says. For a time private citizens flew it without the arms, because a rule forbidding them to use the arms of the Republic was read as covering the flag; a later decision made clear that it did not. Store norske leksikon still describes the white and blue flag without the arms as the civil flag.

Telling it from the flags of the nine castelli

San Marino’s nine municipalities, the castelli, fly the same white over blue, each with its own arms in the centre and its name written vertically down the side by the pole, under a decree of 28 March 1997. The arms of the City of San Marino are close to the state’s: on blue, three yellow towers with white plumes, with a crenellated white wall in front bearing the motto LIBERTAS. The state flag has no name along the pole, and its arms are crowned.

The colours before 1862

San Marino’s first flag, from 1465, was made by a Florentine craftsman: a horizontal tricolour of orange, white and violet with the arms in the centre, the government says. Those colours are still used on ceremonial banners and at historical re-enactments. The change to white and blue began in 1797, when the Great and General Council took a white and blue cockade much like the French revolutionaries’. Store norske leksikon dates the arms to the 14th century and says the laurel and oak stand for the Republic’s stability and its defence of liberty.