The official site of Italy's central bank

From the beginning to the Second World War

In 1893 the directorate general of the Bank of Italy moved to Palazzo Koch in Via Nazionale, but the banknote printing works remained at the old headquarters of the Banca Nazionale nel Regno in Via Barbieri.

The equipment handed down by the Banca Nazionale consisted in seven hand presses, ten hand printing presses, two lithographic printing presses and four numbering machines. This was inadequate to serve the steadily expanding volume of currency and to replace all the notes then circulating with new ones, a task that under Law 449/1893 was to be completed within two years.

In 1894 the printing works needed a machine shop and a galvanoplastic workshop for electro-typography, and all the equipment necessary to the entire process of banknote printing was procured. At the same time, for security reasons, the printing works and all its equipment were moved to Via dei Serpenti.

In the next few years, the works were steadily expanded with the purchase of new, technically advanced machinery, such as a Phénix mechanical platen printing press, acquired in 1897 from J.G. Schelter & Giesecke of Leipzig and two Albert presses.

In 1910 a large number of counterfeit banknotes were discovered, and the Bank decided to upgrade its production methods. Copperplate printing was accordingly introduced and the Bank then acquired first papermaking equipment of its own and then printing "presses that were more advanced and could print in four colours at once". Eight Johnston copperplate presses were bought.

In 1926 the Bank of Italy, as the sole remaining institution of banknote issue, had a "workload four times as great as at first" and acted for further renovation of the equipment.

By the early 1930s, however, the machinery again began to be inadequate to provide the new notes required, in part because they were now smaller and in part because printing had to be speeded up. So the equipment was replaced by new machines manufactured by Waite. The Bank also acquired two new Lambert four-colour printing machines and four one-colour machines - three Otleys and one Crabtree.