Borders that make no sense

Campione d'Italia is 2.6 square kilometres of Italy entirely surrounded by the Swiss canton of Ticino, separated from the rest of the country by about a kilometre of Switzerland. For most of the last century it used Swiss post, Swiss telephone codes and Swiss francs, while remaining outside the customs territory of the European Union. That ended on 1 January 2020, when it entered the EU customs territory. What applies there is not VAT but a local consumption tax, aligned to the Swiss rate and set at 8.1 per cent since 1 January 2024. If you go, go for the anomaly, not the casino.

Source: Swiss Post; swissinfo.ch

Livigno sits at 1,816 metres in the upper Valtellina and is outside the EU VAT territory and outside Italian excise duties. The exemption dates to 1538, was confirmed by Napoleon in 1805 and written into Italian law in 1910, and was granted because snow cut the valley off for months at a time. It has survived into European law, which is why fuel and alcohol are visibly cheaper there. What you may carry out is capped, and the Guardia di Finanza checks at the passes.

Source: geopop.it; focus.it

In 1441 the Papal States and Florence divided a border along a stream called the Rio. There were two streams with that name. The 330 hectares between them, with roughly 250 inhabitants, belonged to neither state, and nobody claimed them for 385 years. The Republic of Cospaia had no army, no prison and one law, carved above the church door: perpetua et firma libertas. It grew tobacco, duty free, until it was dissolved on 26 June 1826.

Source: Umbria Tourism

A substantial part of the roughly 740-kilometre border between Italy and Switzerland runs across glaciers and snowfields. Because the line follows the watershed, melting ice physically moves it. In 2008 the two countries formalised the principle of a mobile border, and in 2024 the Swiss Federal Council approved a rectification around Testa Grigia, where a mountain refuge built in 1984 is ending up on the wrong side.

Source: swisstopo, Swiss Confederation

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a subject of international law with no territory. Its seat is a palazzo at Via dei Condotti 68 in Rome, which Italy treats as extraterritorial. It maintains bilateral diplomatic relations with 115 states and issues around 500 diplomatic passports. You can walk past the door between two fashion houses without noticing.

Source: Order of Malta

After the death of Skanderbeg in 1468, Albanian refugees settled across southern Italy. Their descendants, the Arbereshe, still speak an archaic Albanian in just under fifty communities across seven regions, and in some of them the mass is still celebrated in the Byzantine rite. Italian law recognises twelve historic linguistic minorities, Albanian among them.

Source: Treccani; Ministero dell'Interno

None of these are secrets. They are simply things that no one thinks to tell you, because to an Italian they are just how the map works.