1 Piastra - Urban VIII

Urban VIII — born Maffeo Barberini — was elected pope in August 1623, and this piastra from Ferrara dates to just his second year of pontificate. Ferrara had only come under direct papal administration in 1598 when Clement VIII seized it upon the extinction of the Este dynasty's legitimate male line, and the mint remained a secondary but active operation under Roman oversight well into the seventeenth century.

The Berman 1776 attribution places this firmly in a short emission window. Urban's early coinage from Ferrara is considerably scarcer than his later Roman mint production.