5 Lire

The Consorzio Obbligatorio was a short-lived administrative arrangement, created in 1874 to coordinate the six Italian banks of issue that coexisted after unification — Banca Nazionale, Banca Nazionale Toscana, Banca Toscana di Credito, Banca Romana, Banco di Napoli, and Banco di Sicilia. Rather than unify them under a single central bank, the Italian state compelled them to act collectively, pooling small-denomination issuance under this consortium structure. The arrangement was always uneasy.

The San Teodoro workshop had printed government documents since the papal period and was the natural choice for the new Italian state's fiduciary paper. By 1893 the Banca Romana scandal had destroyed the political case for the consortium model entirely.