0 Euro - Château de Pierrefonds

The 0 Euro souvenir note program, administered through various European cultural institutions from around 2015 onward, occupies a strange corner of numismatics — legal tender in denomination only, never intended for circulation, printed to collector tolerances by security printers who normally produce the real thing. Oberthur Fiduciaire handling this run is entirely appropriate given their long relationship with the Banque de France and their Rennes facilities' capacity for short security runs.

Pierrefonds is worth noting here because the castle most visitors see today is largely a 19th-century reconstruction by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, commissioned by Napoleon III — making it more architectural fantasy than medieval survival. The note commemorates a constructed image of the Middle Ages rather than the thing itself.