Kingdom of Lombardy & Venetia
The Kingdom of Lombardy-Ventia was located in the north, on the mainland of Italy – encompassing the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice. Formed in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna after the fall of Napolean Bonaparte, it was part of the Austrian Empire. In the late 1850 and early 1860s, some reforms were set in place, including a constitution in 1861, which formed a bicameral parliament.
The stamps in this sub-album are from the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia – Lombardo-Veneto in Italian. In those years, stamps almost always were imprinted with the image of the King or the royal crest. These stamps are in keeping with that limited convention of the time. There are images of the Austrian king and of the Austrian coat of arms – which is the same as the coat of arms printed on this page.
Part of this kingdom ended in 1859 as part of the Second Italian War of Independence: Lombady was surrendered to the French, who gave it to the Kindom of Sardinia, which in turn became the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. The Veneto part, which included Venice and Mantua, was conquered during the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866 along with the Papal States. As a result, this sub-album and the Papal States sub-album include stamps issued and used after the start of the Kingdom of Italy.
First Stamps on Peninsula
The Austrians, being a Germanic people, tend to be much more organized and proned to a well functioning government. As a result, it seems, they were the first of the Italian states to use postage stamps. This album page contains – or will contain eventually – stamps that were issued by the Kingdom of Lombardo-Veneto in 1850. They show the crest of the kingdom, which is the same or close to the same as that of the Austrian Empire, of which they were part.
The currency of the Kingdom of Lombardo-Veneto was the lira. Its sub-unit was the centesimo, one-hundred of which equaled one lira. The stamps for this page are in centesimi or cents. The design and printing is fairly simple and was easily forged, as were the stamps of many of the sovereignties of Italy during these early years. Notice that these stamps are not perforated: they weren’t partially cut with small holes to make them easy to tear apart. Instead, they’re imperforate and were cut with scissors or some other instrument.
Note
This page is empty; I have none of these stamps, yet. I only recently designed and printed the page, though. I hope to get some of them soon, but they’re not very cheap: nor are most of the other stamps in this album. So it will be a slow process for me to fill in these pages. I’ll probably mostly buy used ones, although I prefer unused stamps – many of the unused ones cost thousands of euros.
Contains 17 spots: own 0 – 0 unused, 0 used.
Album or Web Page Last changed Jul 7, 2023
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
5c (1850) |
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2 |
10c (1850) |
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3 |
15c (1850) |
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4 |
15c (1850) |
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6 |
15c (1850) |
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7 |
30c (1850) |
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8 |
30c (1850) |
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10 |
45c (1850) |
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12 |
45c (1850) |
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14 |
15c (1851) |
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15 |
15c (1851) |
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16 |
30c (1851) |
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17 |
45c (1851) |
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19 |
10c (1854) |
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20 |
15c (1854) |
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21 |
30c (1854) |
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22 |
45c (1854) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
