Historical Sketch

In 1569, the Medici ruler of Florence was elevated Grand Duke of Tuscany, thus creating a new style of monarchy. When the Medici family went extinct in 1737 the crown was inherited by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. In 1799, Napoleonic France briefly occupied Tuscany for the first time and then again in 1801, when it got restyled into the Kingdom of Etruria, placed under Bourbon rule as part of an agreement between France and Spain. The state existed only for six years, then in 1807, Tuscany / Etruria got annexed to France with Napoleon's sister holding the nominal grand ducal title. The 1815 Congress of Vienna restored the Tuscan Grand Duchy under Habsburg rule. In the Sardinian-Austrian war of 1859, Lombardy was annexed by Sardinia and neighboring Tuscany got occupied during the conflict. The Habsburg duke was deposed by the Tuscan National Assembly in mid-1859. After a plebiscite in 1860, Tuscany united with Sardinia and joined the Kingdom of Italy in the following year.

Monetary History Overview

Immediately after the accession of the Habsburg rulers to the Grand-ducal thrown, the silver coinage was reformed and based on the unit "Paolo". The gold coins had been reformed in 1719 under Medici rule and continued unchanged. The accounting continued to be done in the 1st Tuscan Lira, dating back to the Middle Ages, with the Paolo being two thrids of a Lira. During the brief annexation to France, the Tuscan mint remained inoperative and coins of the (Napoloeonic) Kingdom of Italy were made current, but the Tuscan coinage remained in circulation. The restored Grand-Duchy of 1814 resumed minting without change of the system. In 1821, a first attempt at simplification was made by issuing coins in Lira and decimal fractions directly. They were, however, not welcome in transactions, and the experiment was abandoned. The coinage act of 1826 made a second attempt by creating the Tuscan Florin as unit of account and base silver coin at 1⅔ Lire. These coins with decimal subunit indeed did circulate but without displacing the older pieces, thus making the coinage even more complicated. In August 1859, the Italian independence movement ousted the Habsburgs and installed a provisional government under Sardinian suzerainty. It immediately adopted the Sardinian coinage standard as 2nd Tuscan (New) Lira with coins depicting the Savoy ruler as "Italian king elect". The 1859 reform thus anticipated the unification of the Italian currency in 1861.

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