Catalog
1 Lira
| Issuer | Kingdom of Italy |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881-1882 |
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| Currency | Lira (1861-2001) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | UNA LIRA BIGLIETTO GIA` CONSORZIALE A CORSO FORZOSO ED INCONVERTIBILE VALE UNA LIRA Legge 25 Dicembre 1881 Il Cassiere Speciale Il Delegato della Corte del Conti Regno d`Italia - 1 LIRA - Regno d`Italia UNA LIRA (Translation: ONE LIRA ALREADY CONSORTIUM TICKET FORCED TENDER AND INCONVERTIBLE IT`S WORTH ONE LIRA Law 25 December 1881 The Special Cashier The Delegate of the Court of Auditors Kingdom of Italy - 1 LIRA - Kingdom of Italy ONE LIRA) |
| Reverse description | At left, a vignette of Italia Turrita in profile facing right, rendered in light red-brown. At right, an encircled panel carries the legal anti-counterfeiting text. Interlaced knot-work ornaments frame the composition throughout, all in light red-brown, with the repeated denomination '1 Lira' reserved in white against the background. |
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| Comments |
Italy's earliest small-denomination treasury notes — the "biglietti di Stato" — were introduced in the early 1880s partly to replace worn fractional coinage that had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or exported as the silver content outpaced face value. The 1 Lira addressed a genuine transactional gap at the lowest end of everyday commerce.
The Officina Carte Valori at San Teodoro was the Italian state's own security printing facility, established to reduce foreign printing dependency — a politically sensitive issue for a kingdom barely two decades old. P#10 is among the first outputs from that domestic capability at this denomination.