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Italy's Ministero del Tesoro — not the Banca d'Italia, which didn't exist until 1893 — issued these small-denomination Treasury notes as a direct state obligation, bypassing the country's fragmented network of issuing banks entirely. The decade-long run and three successive signature pairs reflect high-volume, continuous production rather than distinct emission series; the block numbering tells the real story of output scale.

Printed domestically by the Officina Carte-Valori in Turin, the notes circulated hard. Low-denomination state paper takes punishment, and surviving examples from the early Dell'Ara/Crodara blocks are noticeably scarcer than the later Righetti-countersigned issues.