5 Scudi

The Banca dello Stato Pontificio issued this note during one of the most precarious stretches in the Papal States' political existence. By 1866, French troops — the only credible defense of what remained of papal temporal power — had withdrawn under the terms of the September Convention, leaving Rome exposed. The bank was essentially financing a government that most of Europe had already written off as doomed.

Circulation was geographically confined to the shrinking territory still under papal control. When Rome fell to Italian forces in September 1870, the bank's notes were demonetized and the institution dissolved. Notes from this 1866–1867 emission rarely turn up in any condition, largely because so few people had reason to preserve them after unification swept through.