0 Euro - Avignon - Palais des Papes

The souvenir euro program, administered under license from the European Central Bank, authorizes the production of zero-denomination notes that are legal in design but not in tender — a distinction that has created genuine confusion at some tourist tills. Oberthur Fiduciaire, one of the few security printers with both ECB approval and the production infrastructure to meet the program's anti-counterfeiting specifications, handles the bulk of French issues in this series.

Avignon's papal connection runs from 1309 to 1377, when the papacy relocated from Rome under French political pressure — seven successive popes resided there, none voluntarily.