San Marino – the oldest country in the world

Possibly because it’s too small and insignificant for anyone to worry about invading, the tiny Republic of San Marino has been in existence since AD301. Surprisingly, this makes the 61 km² state, entirely landlocked by Italy, the oldest country in the world. Whilst other nations have been busy invading each other, changing names and having revolutions, sleepy San Marino has stood by and watched, untroubled. It doesn’t have an airport or railway station (try nearby Rimini in Italy for that), and shopping is the main attraction for the three million tourists that visit every year. This is largely because items are not subject to the 20% sales tax imposed by Italian law, but novelty collectables such as stamps and coin sets are also big earners. However, it’s not all souvenirs and duty free shopping, with the three mountain fortresses overlooking the Adriatic coast providing views that far bigger nations would be insanely jealous of. Getting to San Marino Nearest International Airport: Rimini in Italy is the closest, although Bologna is not far away and that gets more flights. Using public transport: Buses go reasonably regularly from outside Rimini’s train station. More information: San Marino tourism

Author David Whitley is an Australia travel expert who runs AustraliaTravelQuestions.com

World’s Oldest Museums – Musei Capitolini in Rome, Italy

Unsurprisingly, the prestige of being the oldest building containing old things is fought over quite vigorously by people who should perhaps know better.
Anyway, just about every place housing a dusty old relic will claim to be the oldest museum by inserting some kind of sub-clause, but the most convincing argument comes from the Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums) in Rome, Italy.
They go back to 1471, although they would have been admittedly a pretty poor effort back then, containing only some bronze statues donated by Pope Sixtus IV.
It was 1734 before the museums opened to the public, and is now home to a wealth of artefacts from the Roman Empire, as well as various impressive sculptures.

More information: Musei Capitolini

Mouth of Truth in Rome, Italy

Made famous by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, La Bocca della Verità is perhaps the only former manhole cover in the world that acts as a polygraph test.
Standing outside the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin near the Ponte Palatino in Rome, Italy, it supposedly catches out liars.
The old manhole cover takes the form of a human face carved into stone, and it has a small stone hole in which the brave can put their hand, and then make a statement. Should your words be the truth, you will be able to pull your hand out with no effect.
Should you tell a dastardly, wicked lie – and now is probably not the time to continue your line about how the hamster died or how much that bargain pair of shoes cost – the mouth will snap shut and bite your hand off. There must be a lot of honest people around, as there is no pile of amputated fingers to be seen on the floor beneath.

Serial Killer Museum in Florence, Italy

Saying hi to Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy looks like such a pleasant young man. He’s well dressed, has a lovely car and sports a suitably sensible haircut. Just a shame he had to kill all those people, really.
Standing next to Ted’s waxwork model is just the tip of the iceberg, however. As his story is recounted in frighteningly specific detail through the headphones, a quick scan of the room confirms that bigger horrors await. Such as Aileen Wournos and Jeffrey Dahmer
The Serial Killer Museum in Florence, Italy does exactly what it says on the tin; lots of gore, blood, weaponry and vile misdeeds. And, as such, it is by far the most entertaining thing in the city.
The level of research is commendable. Mass murderers from around the world have been collated, and their stories told. Occasionally it comes across as a rather sick game of Top Trumps, with signs comparing factors such as Number of Victims and Modus Operandi.

John Wayne Gacy’s bedroom
It’s hard to work out whether the visuals or the audio is more disturbing. There are electric chairs, model psychopaths locked in cages and a painstaking recreation of John Wayne Gacy’s bedroom (complete with him in a clown outfit). All jolly pleasant, especially when added to the commentary. It’s no exaggeration to say that you could sit there listening to it for hours, and it goes into the mindset of the killers, what it would have been like for their victims and the methods that police used to track them down. With shameless sensationalism, it regularly uses phrases like “beastly fury”, “signature from hell” and “the assassin can appear from nowhere... AT ANY TIME!”

History of serial killing
It’s not a cheap, morally dubious cash-in, though – it is genuinely well done. There’s a sense of context and history – French slaughterers and Hungarian vampiresses from as far back as the 15th century also get covered – whilst there is also a big emphasis put on how such crimes are solved and dealt with. This includes methods of punishment, with the tales of lethal injection tables and electric chairs gone wrong accompanied by real-life (decommissioned) dispatch mechanisms to gawp at.
And, for these reasons, a bizarre serenity envelopes the museum, completely at odds with the subject matter. It’s quite clear that most of the visitors are frazzled and harried from a day of hardcore tourism in a fairly unrelenting city. The opportunity to sit down in a nice chair and listen to the theories about Jack The Ripper while Charles Manson stares at you is, oddly, a very welcome one.
Who’d have thought the Butcher of Rostov would make better company than Michaelangelo’s David?

Getting to the Serial Killer Museum in Florence
The Serial Killer Museum is part of the Museo Criminale on Via Cavour in Florence. It’s a couple of minutes’ walk away from the Duomo.

Nearest international airport: Florence.