2 Soldi / 10 Centesimi - Pius IX

These copper pieces were struck at Rome under increasingly desperate political circumstances — by 1866, the Papal States had already lost the Romagna, Marche, and Umbria to Piedmontese annexation, leaving Pius IX sovereign over little more than Rome and its immediate surroundings, propped up by a French garrison. The dual denomination marking, expressing value in both the old soldi system and the new decimal centesimi, reflects the Vatican's reluctant accommodation to monetary reforms sweeping the peninsula even as the papacy refused political accommodation to the unified Italian state.

Pius IX's temporal rule ended definitively in September 1870 when Italian troops breached the Aurelian Wall at Porta Pia. These coins had barely two years of official circulation before the issuing authority ceased to exist.