0 Euro Pic du Midi

The Pic du Midi de Bigorre observatory souvenir note was issued under the EuroSouvenir program, a licensing scheme approved by the European Central Bank that permits the production of zero-denomination collector notes in euro format, provided they cannot be mistaken for legal tender. Oberthur Fiduciaire, one of the few security printers with both the ECB relationship and the technical credentials to produce these, handles the bulk of the series.

The Pic du Midi itself sits at 2,877 metres in the Pyrenees and hosted one of France's principal astronomical research stations — its exceptional atmospheric clarity made it a preferred site for lunar mapping used by NASA ahead of the Apollo missions.