| Seborga (Principality of) 
Perched on a hilltop at the western end of the Italian region of Liguria, near the border with France and in sight of neighbouring Monaco, the Principality of Seborga is a geopolitical oddity that has successfully exploited its unique history, location and character over recent years in order to inject a healthy level of diversity into its local economy, thereby reversing the type of decline that has affected similar small rural communities in this part of the world.
Originally a feudal fiefdom of the Counts of Ventimiglia, Castrum Sepulcri as Seborga was then known, was gifted by them in 954 AD to the Benedictine monastic order, who in 995 minted Seborga's first coins. Elevated in 1079 to the status of a principality under the Holy Roman Empire, Seborga was later governed as a sovereign state by the Knights Templar and then by monks of the Cistercian monastic order. This situation continued unchanged until 1729, when King Vittorio Amedeo I of Savoy acquired ownership of the principality - and it is at this point that Seborga's history really gets interesting. It appears that although a deed of sale between the Kingdoms of Sardinia and Savoy was drawn up, no official transfer of ownership was ever registered by either party - and as such Seborga passed into a sort of geopolitical twilight zone - failing completely to be accounted for at the Congress of Vienna (1814), in the Act of Unification of Italy (1861), and at the formation of the Italian Republic (1946).
In the early 1960s the head of the local flower-growers co-operative, one Giorgio Carbone began promoting the idea that Seborga's 14 square kilometre territory still technically retained its historic independence. By 1963 the people of Seborga were so convinced of these arguments that they elected Carbone as their Head of State. Henceforth he was to be known as SAS Giorgio I, Principe di Seborga (HSH George I, Prince of Seborga).
Apart from this singular action however, very little else of substance appears to have happened on the Seborgan self-determination front until 1995, when a referendum reasserting Seborga's independence and establishing a new constitution was approved - near unanimously - by the tiny nation's 362-strong electorate.
From then onwards the pace of change was rapid, and tourism became a major supplement to Seborga's traditional horticulture-based economy. The charismatic Prince Giorgio established several orders of knighthood (complete with accompanying pomp and ceremony), printed postage stamps, identity cards and passports, manufactured car licence plates, and minted a circulating currency to satisfy growing demand from local residents, visitors and collectors alike. The principality's historic town centre was also sympathetically and sensitively restored, ensuring that its charms were protected from commercial overdevelopment. Today, though still officially unrecognized by its larger neighbours and occasionally uncharitably disparaged as being 'like something out of a Marx brothers film', Seborga is a viable, thriving community of several thousand people, boasting diplomatic representatives in a handful of European nations and a unique place in the wider international community. It can legitimately lay claim to being amongst the most successful of the world's recent "new country projects".
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