The official site of Italy's central bank

1973-79

At the beginning of the 1970s, the Bank of Italy designed and produced two banknotes of intermediate value - the 2,000 and the 20,000 notes - in order to extend the range of denominations.

In the second half of the 1970s, changes were made to the denominations already in circulation to completely renew the notes from an aesthetic point of view and to reduce the scope for counterfeiting. Surveys conducted by the Bank had in fact shown that an effective defence against forgery should be based not only on the continuous updating of printing systems and improvements in the production techniques for watermarked paper, but also on the public's greater attention to the notes it was using.

To encourage people to look at the banknotes passing through their hands, it was decided to replace the instantly recognizable portraits of famous people with anonymous faces invented by the designer or based on works of art. This task was entrusted to the Bank's engravers, Giovanni Pino and Guglielmo Savino.