Two Ends of Awfulness

In a piece on the awfulness of National Anthems (the UK's unpoetic but not rabble-rousing dirge* at one end and France's blood-lusting, racist militarism at the other) Tim Dowling contends that the best anthems, 'like those of Kosovo and San Marino, have no words at all'.

This reminded me tangentially that San Marino (area 61.2 sq.km, twelve times the size of the Vatican City) is the world's oldest-surviving sovereign state, as well as its oldest constitutional republic, whose official founding date is given as the third of September 301 CE.

The reason it survives today is that it gave refuge to Garibaldi and others campaigning for Italian unity. 

Over the centuries, it has probably the best record in the world for accepting 'asylum-seekers' and refugees.

Its two heads of state serve concurrently and with equal powers until their term expires after six months and another two are elected: the model for Switzerland. 
It is not a member of the EU, although it uses euros as currency.

San Marino had the world's first democratically-elected communist government – a coalition between the Sammarinese Communist and Socialist Parties, which held office between 1945 and 1957.

* The words and music (a galliard) of God Save the King was, rather like the British constitution, not composed by anyone in particular, but coalesced over time.  The tune has been used in other anthems (royal, national and patriotic).

Another tidbit from Wikipedia: Jaxa was a small state that existed during the 17th century at the border between Tsardom of Russia and Qing China. Despite its location in East Asia, the its main language was Polish at a time when the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.