ROME, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- Italians will say a final ciao to the lira Thursday night as the country switches exclusively to the new euro currency.
Polls show more than a few Italians are a little misty eyed about the final change over. The lira was introduced following unification in 1871, and historians say it played a major role in making unity work.
"This is a historic change, and Italians realize that," Tommaso Castellani, who directed a survey about the switch for the polling firm Opinioni, told United Press International. "To be sure, the lira is already missed, but Italians look at the sacrifices involved with the change as a way to move the country forward to integrate it into Europe."
Italian government estimates showed with a week to go before the lira's official end, around 12 percent of all cash transactions were still using the old currency -- only slightly higher than the average in the eight other European Union countries making the switch on the same day. Most Italians admit to still calculating values in lire, and in most shops, clerks still are quick to translate unfamiliar prices into lira values for customers still confused by the new euro.
"If the price says 5 euros, you can take out euros and pay and that is not a problem," said Francesco Santoro, 63, a recently retired bank teller. "But you have to figure out, oh, yes, that's 10,000 lire, in order to know if the price is fair or not. That kind of calculation will go on in people's heads for many months."
Italians remain sentimentally attached to their old currency despite its often-troubled history. Roughly on parity with the dollar before World War I, inflation took hold of the lira after that and by the time the euro officially was introduced on Jan. 1, it took some 2,238 lire to buy a single dollar. It was a trend that convinced generations of Italians that it was safer to keep their money abroad or invested in property than it was to deposit cash in the bank.
Italians joked it was easier to become a millionaire in Italy -- something that required a net worth of just $447 -- then anywhere else in the 12-country euro zone. And the 1,937 lire needed to buy a single euros dwarfs the 341 drachma needed in Greece, home to the second weakest currency.
"We grew up with the lire and it's not an easy thing to forget about," said Adele Iperti, 88, a fruit seller in Rome's historic center. "The lira has had its problems, but it was always our currency, a symbol of Italy. A lot of people I talk to are sad to see it go."
There will be little fanfare when it finally does go. There will be no official countdown on television or in the country's famous plazas, as there was when the euro was introduced at the start of the year.
Plans have been announced for a monument to the departing national currency, which showed opera composer Giuseppe Verdi on one of its denominations. The Lira Monument is to be partly paid for with coins tossed into Rome's myriad fountains and donated by departing tourists at airports. But details still are vague, with the location, design and budget still being debated.
Though several members of the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have voiced skepticism about the common European currency, polls show younger Italians are more hopeful. They feel the groundwork is being laid for an economy that will rival the U.S. economic engine, and say the days in which Italians identify themselves with their home town or region -- each complete with its own dialect and cuisine -- may be numbered.
"Older Italians always say that they are from Rome or from Naples or Bologna, but I already feel that I am more of a European," said Alberto Alteri, a 31-year-old native Roman. "I think that in the future, the introduction of the euro will make some of these local distinctions less important."
Private Italian banks have extended the deadline for changing lira coins and bills from Thursday until June 30. After that, the small change found under sofa cushions and car seats will have to be hauled to the Bank of Italy to be converted.
Like other euro-zone countries, Italy expects a windfall worth several billion dollars, in that up to 20 percent of the lire in circulation will not be converted because they have been lost or destroyed or kept as a souvenir of a previous era.
Of the 12 euro-zone countries, Holland, Ireland and France already have made the switch to the euro. The remaining nine -- Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Portugal -- will make the change at midnight on Thursday.
