Seborga: The Italian Village Of 300 Residents That Wants To Be A Country

Atop an idyllic hill in the Italian Riviera sits a tiny village with a big dream: becoming an independent nation.

The Principality of Seborga already has its own flag, national anthem, passports, stamps, currency and, of course, a monarch. It hopes to one day back them up with legal recognition of its sovereignty, which it has been seeking since the 1960s.

For now, however, Seborga is simply a picturesque hamlet in the northern Italian province of Imperia, close to France, with just over 300 residents and covering about five square miles of land.

The road that leads up to town has an unofficial border crossing, complete with a sentry box painted in the colors of Seborga’s flag, which on occasion is manned by self-proclaimed border guards.

Beautifully positioned, Seborga gets stunning views of the Riviera below, including the Principality of Monaco — perhaps the world’s most famous microstate and an inspiration for Seborga’s continued quest for independence.

“The lawyers are working on it,” says Her Serene Highness Princess Nina of Seborga, “that’s why I got elected Princess.”

In Seborga, where the monarchy is not hereditary, elections take place every seven years and Princess Nina is the first woman to hold the post.

Born in Germany, Nina Döbler Menegatto was living in Monaco when she discovered Seborga 15 years ago with her ex-husband and former prince, Marcello I, who abdicated in 2019.

“Initially I thought the whole story was quite funny and I didn’t take it seriously,” she says about Seborga’s claim to independence, “but then I read into it and it’s all true.”

The claim originates in the early 1960s when Giorgio Carbone, who ran a local co-op of flower farmers, looked into the town’s history and found that something was amiss.

Seborga was donated to Benedictine monks in the year 954, until they sold it in 1729 to the Kingdom of Sardinia, which would later become part of the Kingdom of Italy. But, according to Carbone, there is no historical record of the sale, which means Seborga was never legitimately part of Italy at all.

“It is difficult to think that, almost 300 years later, this absence of documentation is a realistic basis on which to build a legal recognition,” says Graziano Graziani, an Italian expert on micronations. “However, the community that believes in the independence of Seborga bases its demands precisely on it.”

Both the Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights have previously rejected Seborga’s bid, but the princess is undeterred. “It’s obviously not an easy case,” she says. “It won’t happen today or tomorrow, but nothing is impossible: look at Brexit.”