100 Lire - Ioannes Pavlvs II Doves

By 1997, Italy's lira was in its final years — the currency would be permanently fixed to the euro in 1999 and withdrawn from circulation in 2002. Vatican coinage, tied to Italian monetary agreements dating back to the 1929 Lateran Treaty, followed suit, making issues from this period among the last 100 Lire pieces the Holy See would ever produce in this denomination. Acmonital — the stainless steel alloy developed by Krupp and adopted across Italian coinage in the 1950s — was chosen for its resistance to wear, an irony given how little time these coins had left in circulation.