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Home › Media and Events › Photo Gallery › Buildings and museums › The Money Museum › II.1 - Silver stater of Croesus (561-546 BC)

II.1 - Silver stater of Croesus (561-546 BC)

On the observe of the coin are depicted the heads of a lion and a bull facing each other.
Precious metals were exchanged by weight from the earliest times but only became "money" when the seal of a recognized authority was impressed on a few small ingots of agreed weight and alloy, making it possible to exchange them by number rather than by weight and rendering the use of scales unnecessary.
Herodotus attributed this development to the Lydians, who minted coins in gold and silver. Croesus, the last king of Lydia, is credited with the creation of a bi-metallic monetary system based on gold and silver coins (Croeseids) linked by fixed value ratios.
When the sacred area dedicated to Artemis was being excavated at Ephesus several small disc-shaped lumps in electrum, buried at the time of Croesus, were found (completely unmarked metal lumps, discs with striations or punch marks, discs with figures and inscriptions). They are of immense historical interest as they document the very beginnings of the circulation of coinage in Asia Minor.


Entrance to the Money Museum
Entrance to the Money Museum, view of the atrium with the plan of the museum
Room I, also called the “Sala Oddo”
Room II, case containing books on numismatics
Room IV, display of paper money
III. 3 Royal Finance Department, One-Hundred Lire Note Dated 1st April 1760
Manifattura di Lana in Borgosesia (Vercelli, at the time Novara) – 50 cents
Società Promotrice dell’Industria Nazionale (Turin) – 50 cents
Banca Popolare di Milano – 3 Lire (issued on 20th June 1866) – (extremely rare)
III.16 Design for a ten-lire state note dated circa 1920
III. 17 - Set of three designs for one-hundred, five-hundred and one-thousand lire banknotes of the American Banknote Company
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