1000 Lei

Printed by the Banque de France in Paris, this note was part of Romania's interwar effort to maintain Western European printing standards at a time when the leu was under sustained pressure from trade imbalances and incomplete monetary stabilization following the 1929 reforms. The engraving was handled by Eugène Gaspérini, one of the Banque de France's most accomplished intaglio specialists of the period.

The design credit to Nicolae Grigorescu is notable — Grigorescu was Romania's most celebrated 19th-century painter, who had died in 1907. His work was adapted posthumously for banknote use, a common nationalistic gesture in interwar Romanian currency design.