20 Euros - Chambéry

Chambéry served as the capital of the Duchy of Savoy for centuries before the region's annexation to France in 1860, and this issue belongs to the wave of local emergency-style commemorative currency that French municipalities produced during the 1990s under a program permitting cities to issue limited legal-tender pieces tied to their history. The authorization was narrow — denominations had to be expressed in francs or euros, quantities strictly capped — and many towns used the opportunity to issue just a single type before the program quietly expired ahead of euro adoption.