500 Lire

The Banca d'Italia began printing this series in-house at its Rome facility in the late 1930s, a period when the bank was operating under substantially reduced autonomy following Mussolini's 1936 banking reforms, which brought the institution firmly under state control. That political reality shaped everything from currency policy to the design approval process.

The P#3 designation in the Pick catalogue covers a fairly tight date range, and notes from the 1939 printings are meaningfully scarcer than the 1938 issues — wartime disruptions to normal banking channels accelerated hoarding before many examples entered sustained circulation.