Five ordinary patches of ground — a hill village, a desert yard, a pub in the back country, a riverside slum and a wheat farm — whose residents looked at the map, decided they were not part of the country around them, and printed the passports to prove it.
Giorgio Carbone, head of the local flower growers' co-operative, revived the old claim in 1963 and was duly elected Prince Giorgio I, styling himself 'His Tremendousness'. He held the throne until his death in 2009; the village has elected two more heads of state since, Princess Nina Menegatto reigning since 2019, and Italy has gone on collecting its taxes throughout.
Kevin Baugh dreamed the country up in 1977 and settled it on this patch of Nevada in 1998. Molossia bans plastic bags, incandescent bulbs, onions and spinach, fines anyone detonating a nuclear device 500 Valoras, and has considered itself at war with East Germany since Baugh's army days — an enemy that stopped existing in 1990.
Independence was declared on 1 November 1989 after a local-government reshuffle pushed the settlement out of Taranaki and into Manawatū–Whanganui. Republic Day moved to every second January in 2001 to catch the summer, and now draws thousands to a village of about 160 people; the hotel will still stamp your passport for a gold coin.
The Republic of Užupis declared itself on 1 April 1997, across the Vilnia river from Vilnius's old town. Its forty-one articles were dashed off over a single summer evening in 1998 by the film-maker Romas Lileikis, who became president, and the translator Tomas Čepaitis, who became foreign minister; they now hang on Paupio Street on mirrored plaques in dozens of languages, with fresh translations unveiled most years.
Leonard Casley seceded on 21 April 1970 over a wheat quota that would have let him sell about 1,647 bushels off 4,000 hectares, and styled himself Prince Leonard soon afterwards; the place only dropped 'Province' from its name, to become the Principality of Hutt River, in September 2006. Australia never recognised it but largely left it alone, until a 2017 court order for A$2.7 million in unpaid tax — and a pandemic that ended the tourist coaches — pushed his son Prince Graeme to dissolve the whole thing on 3 August 2020.
Think you'd have found them? Play today's expedition, or replay this one from the archive.