1/100 centesimo Rarely used £20, £40 Unofficial user(s) Austria (silver coins) | Symbol £ Official user(s) Lombardy-Venetia | |
Coins c.1, c.3, c.5, c.10, c.15
£¼, £½, £1, £3, £6 | ||
The pound (Italian: lira) was the currency of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia.
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The pound was made of 4.33 grams of silver (with 9/10 of purity), correspondently to the German standards. Six pounds were called shield (scudo) and were equivalent to the Austrian Conventionsthaler. Each pound was divided into 100 cents (centesimi). All currencies were a re-establishment of the pounds used in the Duchy of Milan until 1796, whereas they had no relation with former defunct Venetian pound. Coins were minted in Milan, Venice and Vienna.
Due to the heavy consequences of the war, Austria was not able to immediately produce the new currency when it took possession of the territory in 1814. So, Napoleonic Italian lira continued to be a legal tender for eight years after the fall of its inventor. The first issue of the Austrian currency was possible only in 1822. New pounds had a lower value than their French-Italian predecessors, which weighed 5 grams.
During the revolutions of 1848, the Lombard Provisional Government briefly suspended the production of the pound and minted instead a special Italian lira ₤5 coin. After the revolutions and the restoration of the Austrian monetary standard, copper coins were reduced in weight. For political purposes the name on these coins (the most popular in circulation) was changed from Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia to the Austrian Empire.
When metropolitan Austria decimalized in 1857, the change did not immediately affected the Kingdom, where old pounds were minted again in 1858. Only in 1862, after the loss of Lombardy to the newborn Italian State, did the remaining part of the Austrian territories adopt the general coinage of the Empire. The Lombardy-Venetia florin (equal to the Austro-Hungarian gulden) became the basic unit of currency, and was divided in 100 soldi; only subunits were specifically produced for the Venetian province. Curiously on these coins, the word Lombardy-Venetia re-appeared, as a sign of revanchism for the lost Lombardy.