100 Lire - Ioannes Paulus II Territory and Progress

By 1992, the Vatican's 100 Lire denomination had become almost an afterthought in Italian daily commerce — Italian inflation had eroded its purchasing power to near nothing, and the lira itself was less than two years from the currency crisis that would force Italy's humiliating exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992. Coins like this one circulated freely alongside Italian state issues under the 1929 Lateran Treaty provisions, yet few ever strayed far from Vatican souvenir counters.