1 Lira

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.