20 Euros Treaty of Rome

The 2007 Italian commemorative gold issue marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, signed on March 25, 1957, in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill. That treaty — actually two treaties signed simultaneously, establishing the EEC and Euratom — transformed a coal-and-steel compact among six nations into the framework that eventually became the European Union. Italy's role was not incidental: Foreign Minister Gaetano Martino had been among the architects of the Messina Conference two years earlier that set the whole negotiation in motion.