The official site of Italy's central bank

1894-96

The Bank of Italy was established under Law 449/1893, following the merger of the Banca Nazionale nel Regno with the Banca Nazionale Toscana and the Banca Toscana di Credito.

The creation of the Bank of Italy brought to a close a long period of plans and studies, beginning immediately after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, to put some order back into the complex panorama of issuing banks inherited from the pre-unification states.

However, the approval of the 1893 law was mainly in response to the crisis in the issuing banks, in particular the Banca Romana. Under the new law, the State authorized the Bank of Italy, together with the Banco di Napoli and the Banco di Sicilia, to issue lira banknotes, while retaining control over this activity and setting the maximum amount in circulation.

The principle that Bank and State should together issue banknotes, so that neither one of them could produce a complete note alone, led to a State stamp being placed on all banknotes. It was only following a regulation of 1981 (Regulation 811/1981) that the State stamp became part of the lira banknote production process and no longer a separate operation.

While the models for the new banknotes were being prepared, the Bank of Italy was authorized to create and issue notes using the clichés of the old Banca Nazionale del Regno d'Italia. The Bank of Italy became operational in January 1894 and in the October of the same year took on the management of Italy's provincial treasury services, a function it still performs today.

A fundamental technical feature of the banknotes issued in this early period was the placing of the counterfoil - a security feature - on the left-hand side of the note. This meant that at the moment of issue, the banknote was detached from its counterfoil by an irregular cut - which remained with the issuing bank - and so the exact match of the banknote with its counterfoil constituted proof of its authenticity.

Royal Decree 321/1895 was passed to regulate better the delicate operations of production and safe-keeping of the new banknotes and to ensure more careful control of the withdrawal from circulation of worn or damaged notes and their ensuing destruction by burning. These provisions were then reviewed and partly changed by Regulation 508/1896 which marked a significant stage in the reorganization of the production process for banknotes - both those issued by the State and those issued by the Bank.