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| Issuer | Nationale Bank van België / Banque Nationale de Belgique |
|---|---|
| Year | 1997 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | Deep purple intaglio print on multicolour guilloche underprint. Conjoined portraits of King Albert II and Queen Paola occupy the left portion, while a vignette of the Parliamentary chamber fills the right. Denomination and bank title inscriptions appear in French along the lower margin. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Multicolour composition dominated by the ornate iron-and-glass greenhouse structures of the Royal Laeken estate at left, rendered in green and grey tones with fine architectural linework; lush tropical foliage fills the right half in vivid greens and pinks against a pale guilloche ground. The large numeral 10000 appears in intaglio at lower right, flanked by the bilingual bank title inscriptions in Dutch and German. |
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| Comments |
The 10,000 franc note was Belgium's highest denomination in the final years before euro conversion, and this 1997 issue was among the last printed before the series was retired at the end of 2001. The National Bank printed in-house at Brussels — not an unusual choice for a central bank of this size, and the Nehls engraving gives the intaglio work a quality that holds up under close inspection.
By the time this note circulated, Belgium's franc had been pegged irrevocably to the euro at 40.3399 BEF, making the 10,000 franc face value exactly €247.89 — a fixed rate from January 1999 onward.