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Denier type au chatel bonifacien surfrappé
| Issuer | Commune of Bonifacio |
|---|---|
| Year | 1282-1453 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | 14.5 mm |
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| Obverse description | Central field depicts the Bonifacian castle (chatel bonifacien), rendered as a stylised fortified tower with crenellations, characteristic of the civic coinage of the commune of Bonifacio. The design is struck over an earlier host coin, resulting in irregular surfaces and partially obscured underlying type. The castle motif occupies the majority of the flan, with the abbreviated legend BO visible in the field. The strike is crude and irregular, consistent with hammered municipal coinage of the medieval period. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | BO |
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| Additional information |
Bonifacio occupied a singular position in medieval Mediterranean commerce — a Genoese colony perched on the southern tip of Corsica, close enough to Sardinia to be visible on clear days, and sufficiently autonomous to strike its own municipal coinage. The overstruck nature of this type is the genuinely interesting detail: Bonifacio's commune applied its own dies to existing coin blanks, a practice that speaks to both the scarcity of raw copper and the political urgency of asserting local monetary authority against competing Genoese and Aragonese interests in the region.
The undertype, when detectable, often betrays its origin in earlier Genoese or local Corsican issues.