1/4 Scudo - Giulio Spinola

Arquata del Bosco was a tiny feudal holding in the Ligurian Apennines, granted to the Spinola family — one of Genoa's great banking dynasties — as an imperial fief under Hapsburg patronage. The right to strike coin was a jealously guarded privilege of that status, and the Spinola exercised it sparingly. Giulio Spinola's issues from the 1680s represent the marquisate's only substantive coinage output, produced in negligible quantities for a territory whose political significance was largely ceremonial by that point.