2 Lire - Victor Emmanuel II

The 2 Lire of 1861–62 belongs to the first coinage of a unified Italian kingdom — a state that had not legally existed twelve months prior. Cavour died in June 1861 before the monetary system he helped architect was fully operational, leaving the newly appointed mint authorities scrambling to rationalize the competing coinages of Sardinia, the Two Sicilies, Lombardy, and the Papal territories into a single decimal framework. The Latin Monetary Union, which Italy would formally join in 1865, was already shaping the specifications chosen here.

Striking occurred at Turin and Florence. The two mints produced noticeably different surface qualities, with Florence issues generally showing softer detail in the fields.