Banca d’Italia prints the Italian share of euro banknotes at its own works in Rome, the Officina Carte Valori. It is one of the printing houses that has run continuously from the first series into the Europa series, which is why Italian collectors meet both of its letters — J and S — on notes that are otherwise identical.
| Country | Italy |
|---|---|
| Printing site | Rome |
| First-series printer letter | J |
| Europa-series printer letter | S |
| Europa-series control number | 7 |
| Status | Active |
Palazzo Koch in Rome, the headquarters of Banca d’Italia. The Officina Carte Valori occupies a separate site in the city.
A central bank that prints its own notes
The Officina Carte Valori was built so that the Italian central bank could design, engrave and print its own paper money rather than commission it abroad. That tradition carried directly into the euro: when production of the first series began in 1999, Rome was among the works accredited to print it, and the plant has been part of every production cycle since.
Under the Eurosystem arrangement each national central bank receives an annual production allocation, decided centrally and expressed in denominations rather than in national designs. A note printed in Rome is not an “Italian” euro banknote in any legal sense. It is a Eurosystem banknote that happens to have been manufactured there.
Two letters, one plant
In the first series the production code letter J identified the Rome works. The letter is easy to confuse with the first letter of the serial number, which in that series identified the issuing national central bank instead — for Italy, S. The Europa series then reassigned the printer letters, and Rome became S in the production code, with control number 7.
That reshuffle is the single most common source of error when reading Italian euro banknotes. A first-series note whose serial number starts with S was issued on behalf of Banca d’Italia but may well have been printed elsewhere in the Eurosystem; a Europa-series note whose production code starts with S was printed in Rome, whatever the country of issue.
Reading the code on a note
The production code is the short alphanumeric group printed separately from the serial number. Its first character is the printer letter described above, followed by the plate number and the sheet position. The full grammar, with the sheet layouts used for each denomination, is set out in the printing offices and printer codes reference.
