Issued in the same year Italy completed its military occupation of Albania, this note came from the newly reorganized Banka Kombëtare e Shqipnis — reconstituted under Italian oversight following King Zog's flight into exile in April 1939. Printing by the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome, was a deliberate administrative choice: the Albanian currency apparatus was being absorbed into the Italian colonial financial structure, and having the state printing institute in Rome produce the paper was part of that consolidation.
The 1939 series circulated through the Italian occupation and into the German-administered period after 1943, meaning surviving notes can show considerable wear accumulated across two distinct occupying regimes.
Issued in the same year Italy completed its military occupation of Albania, this note came from the newly reorganized Banka Kombëtare e Shqipnis — reconstituted under Italian oversight following King Zog's flight into exile in April 1939. Printing by the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome, was a deliberate administrative choice: the Albanian currency apparatus was being absorbed into the Italian colonial financial structure, and having the state printing institute in Rome produce the paper was part of that consolidation.
The 1939 series circulated through the Italian occupation and into the German-administered period after 1943, meaning surviving notes can show considerable wear accumulated across two distinct occupying regimes.