0 Euro - Pontmain - L'apparition 2

EuroSouvenir notes occupy an odd niche — legal in the sense that the European Central Bank permits zero-denomination collector pieces, but never intended to circulate. This one commemorates the 1871 apparition at Pontmain, a village in Mayenne where a group of children reportedly saw a vision of the Virgin Mary above a local barn during the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussian advance halted shortly after, a coincidence the Church later treated as sufficient grounds for beatification of the site in 1876.

Oberthur Fiduciaire, the printer, has produced French security documents since the nineteenth century — an appropriate choice for a note tied to that conflict.