500 Lire Bank of Italy Centennial

Italy's central bank marked its hundredth year in 1993, having been established by the consolidation of six regional note-issuing banks under the 1893 Banking Law — a reform forced largely by the Banca Romana scandal, in which the bank had been secretly printing duplicate-numbered notes and financing politicians. The resulting crisis brought down two governments and remains one of the more embarrassing episodes in Italian financial history.

The bimetallic format was relatively new to Italian coinage at this point, introduced on the 500 Lire in 1982 as an anti-counterfeiting measure after widespread forgery of the earlier silver-clad issues.