This is a specimen ("échantillon type") produced by the Banque de France's printing works at Chamalières as part of the internal design competition — codenamed RAVEL — that France ran in the late 1990s before the eurozone settled on a unified note design. The RAVEL project explored distinctly French aesthetic approaches to the common currency, ultimately going nowhere once the ECB's "Ages and Styles of Europe" designs were adopted for the entire zone.
Chamalières specimens of this type were never intended for public circulation and exist purely as institutional artifacts of a design process that was superseded before it concluded.
This is a specimen ("échantillon type") produced by the Banque de France's printing works at Chamalières as part of the internal design competition — codenamed RAVEL — that France ran in the late 1990s before the eurozone settled on a unified note design. The RAVEL project explored distinctly French aesthetic approaches to the common currency, ultimately going nowhere once the ECB's "Ages and Styles of Europe" designs were adopted for the entire zone.
Chamalières specimens of this type were never intended for public circulation and exist purely as institutional artifacts of a design process that was superseded before it concluded.