La Higher School of Historical Studies of San Marino was founded in 1988, the first activity of the University of San Marino, and launched by the introductory speeches of Aldo Schiavone, Fausta Morganti, Deputy for Education and Culture, Federico Mayor, Director General of UNESCO, and by the inaugural lecture held on September 30, 1989 by Eugenio Garin. The text, titled Polybius and Machiavelli, was published by Gemma Cavalleri in July 1990 by the Department of Education and Culture. Subsequently the text appeared for the types of Einaudi together with the introductory essay alle Florentine stories, now in an anastatic reprint of the 1857 Le Monnier edition.
The first cycle of seminars of the School inaugurated a pioneering teaching experience, not only in the context of the reality of continental Europe. Directed by Aldo Schiavone - assisted by Maurice Aymard, Valerio Castronovo, Gabriele De Rosa, Roberto Finzi, Giuseppe Galasso, Francis Haskell, Wolfang Mommsen, Corrado Vivanti and Renato Zangheri - the School gave life to an unprecedented itinerary between different disciplines, welcoming sociologists and political scientists, anthropologists and economists, archaeologists and jurists, literates and linguists, physicists, geologists and geneticists; and historians in the first place, of the ancient world, of the modern and contemporary age.