The Curious Museums of San Marino

Alongside its state museums, San Marino's old town hosts a cheerfully lurid cluster of private ones: a torture museum of racks and iron maidens, a waxworks parading history's villains and heroes, a museum of curiosities cataloguing the world's oddities, and a vampire-and-monster collection for good measure. They are unashamed tourist entertainments in the seaside-attraction tradition, priced accordingly and threaded between the souvenir shops - and on a rainy mountain afternoon or with teenagers in tow, they earn their keep entirely.

What you actually see

• The Torture Museum - historical instruments with gleeful presentation.
• The waxworks - history and infamy in tableau form.
• The Museum of Curiosities - records, oddities and improbable objects.
• The souvenir lanes - the shopping streets the museums live among.

When to go

Year round; they shine precisely when the weather does not - mountain cloud and rain days that spoil the battlement views. Summer evenings they stay open late with the shopping streets.

Honest expectations

These are kitsch by design: entry fees add up across several, presentation is more showmanship than scholarship, and the torture museum is genuinely grim in content despite the packaging - skip it with younger children. Taken with the right spirit they are good fun; taken seriously they disappoint. The state museum and towers remain the substance.

Nearby

The three towers, the Piazza della Liberta and the state museum.