Baiocchella Fano SEDE VAC type

Castiglione delle Stiviere held the unusual status of an imperial fief under the Gonzaga branch that ruled there — specifically the line descended from Rodolfo Gonzaga. The SEDE VAC type indicates this was struck during a vacancy in the lordship, a relatively common practice among northern Italian minor states where minting rights were jealously exercised even between rulers. The baiocchella denomination itself was a small billon subsidiary unit circulating widely across central and northern Italy in this period, with its name derived from the baiocco of the Papal States — a borrowing that speaks to how thoroughly Roman monetary conventions had penetrated even imperial-fief coinage by the late sixteenth century.