100 Lire Banco di Santo Spirito

The Banco di Santo Spirito traces its origins to 1605, making it one of the oldest banking institutions in Europe — but by the time these notes were issued in the mid-1970s, the bank was operating as a fully nationalized entity under IRI control. These 100 Lire notes functioned as fiduciary money substitutes during the acute coin shortage that plagued Italy throughout the 1970s, when inflation and hoarding effectively stripped small-denomination coins from daily circulation.

The printer, Officine Carte Valori di Mauro in Cava de' Tirreni, was a specialist Italian security printer responsible for several of these emergency scrip-style issues. The series was withdrawn once the Italian state moved to address the coinage gap through other means, including the controversial use of telephone tokens as change.