100 Furlans 900th Anniversary

Friuli issued this coin the year after the catastrophic 1976 earthquake that killed nearly a thousand people and displaced over 150,000 across the Udine and Pordenone provinces. The 900th anniversary commemorated dates to 1077, when Emperor Henry IV granted temporal authority over the region to the Patriarch of Aquileia — the founding act of the Patriarchate of Friuli as a political entity. Coupling that anniversary with a regional silver issue so soon after the disaster was a deliberate act of cultural reconstruction, asserting Friulian identity at a moment when the region was still being physically rebuilt.