25 écu de Fréjus [83]

Fréjus — Forum Julii to its Roman founders — was established by Julius Caesar as a naval base and later expanded by Augustus, who stationed part of the fleet captured at Actium there in 31 BC. The city's 1994 écu issue belongs to a brief and distinctly French phenomenon: the local écu movement of the early 1990s, during which dozens of French municipalities struck their own silver pieces in anticipation of European monetary union, trading on regional identity precisely as it was about to become administratively irrelevant.

The series had no legal tender status nationally. Fréjus issued under department number 83 — Var.