Italian Stamp

Italy has always been a nation of quasi-independent city states. Before the unification of Italy under the aegis of a strong national government, parochial postal services were responsible for delivering mail to the citizenry. In 1819, the City of Sardinia created a special courier service which became well-known for its ''little horses'' stamps.In 1850, following the successful postal reforms of other European states, Italy adopted its own universal postal stamp system. No Italian word for ''postage stamp'' existed, so bureaucrats had to invent the concept of ''francobollo.'' The Italian government contracted a firm called Francoise Mataire to create stamps to pay homage to the great Victor Emmanuel II.The Italian government had to set up local stamp production offices in a series of cities. Over the course of the mid 1800s, the Italians created stamps for Naples, Sicily, Tuscany, Parma, and even the Vatican states. That being said, Mataire's original design gained a certain national currency, and the government decided to reprint Mataire's stamps again and again.Starting around the early 1860s, the government did away with provincial stamp production altogether and introduced the Sardinian stamps as the postal currency of the land. The other cities of Italy had months to years to switch over to the Sardinian stamps. However, by 1863, the Italian government was tired of dealing with so many separate rate entities and instituted a national Italian stamp rate.