Used as a unit of account as early as the 8th century, in Italy the first lira was minted in 1472 by the Republic of Venice. It then came into use in most pre-unification states and continued to be minted in various forms until, in 1806, the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy adopted the Italian lira as its official currency according to a bimetallic decimal system. With the fall of Napoleon and the beginning of the Restoration, the lira continued to be issued and, in particular, the states born during the Risorgimento process adopted the Italian lira as their currency. At the birth of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, the Italian lira became the official currency of the state, continuing its history even after the proclamation of the Republic, then the official Italian currency in the last forty years of the 19th century and in the 20th century remaining with the euro part of the dual currency of the years 1999-2002