50 Drachmes Dionysios Solomos

Dionysios Solomos, the Zakynthian poet who wrote the Hymn to Liberty in 1823, had his work adopted as the Greek national anthem in 1865 — yet he spent most of his adult life in Corfu writing almost exclusively in Italian, producing relatively little in the Greek he publicly championed. His appearance on circulating coinage was well-established before this issue, which entered production in the final years before Greece locked its exchange rate to the euro in preparation for accession. Drachma-denominated coins struck after 2000 were legal tender but saw negligible circulation.