The official site of Italy's central bank

Overseas territories

ITALIAN SOMALILAND

The Italian colony of Somaliland was formed in 1908 when the commander of the colonial troops, Major Di Giorgio, occupied Mogadishu.

In 1910 the silver rupee was introduced as the colony's currency, equal to one-fifteenth of a pound sterling or 1.68 lire. The crisis that followed the First World War would soon highlight all the disadvantages of pegging to two different currencies. And the rise in the world market price of silver provoked hoarding and the illegal export of rupee coins.

Faced with the fact that metal coinage was clearly uneconomic, the Italian government decided by royal decree (13 May 1920) to authorize the Bank of Italy to issue notes in the denominations of "one, five, ten, twenty and fifty Italian rupees" for a total amount not to exceed 2 million. The notes were made at the Bank's Printing Works in Rome under the oversight of the Treasury.

By decree the notes were convertible into silver, but for obvious reasons convertibility was suspended immediately after issue. All the costs of the issue were charged to the Bank of Italy, which produced a total of 5.6 million rupees (not the 2 million originally envisaged) through 1925.

On 18 June 1925, by royal decree, the notes ceased to be legal tender, and on 1 July the Italian lira became the legal tender of Italian Somaliland.

ITALIAN EAST AFRICA

With the end of the seven-month war against Ethiopia, on 9 May 1936 Italy founded a colonial empire officially called Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana), consisting of Italian Somaliland, Ethiopia and Eritrea, the latter having been an Italian colony since 1890.

The colonial currency was the AOI lira, at par with the Italian lira and with the same exchange rate. The first banknotes were printed in 1938. By ministerial decree (28 March 1938) the Bank of Italy was authorized to issue special series of notes in the denominations of 1,000, 500, 100 and 50 lire that could circulate legally in the territories of Italian East Africa. The larger denominations bore the same drawings as the equivalent Italian notes, designed by Giovanni Capranesi. For the 50-lira notes, however, the Giovanni Pietrucci design was chosen, the reverse bearing the Roman she-wolf. The face of all the notes carried the annotation "Serie Speciale Africa Italiana", later changed to "Serie Speciale Africa Orientale Italiana".

These notes ceased to circulate with the British occupation of Italian East Africa in 1941.

ALBANIA

Italy's political, military and economic intervention in Albania lasted from 1925 to 1939. In March 1925 agreements were signed granting Italy oil concessions and assigning it to create a bank of issue, the National Bank of Albania, which was constituted in Rome on 2 September 1925 with the dual role as institute of issue and credit institution.

In 1939, an agreement between the Italian and Albanian governments (20 April) created the "lira area", which meant the abolition of all monetary restrictions between the two countries. A fixed exchange rate between the Albanian franc and the lira was set.

The National Bank of Albania entrusted the production of its banknotes for domestic circulation to the Printing Works of the Bank of Italy. The designs used were in part appropriately modified versions of those on the "second new type" 50-lira and "new type" 100-lira notes.