Word: lire
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...account, Fiumicino's clock had been shattered by the war. Since most townsmen had no watches of their own, repairing the clock was an urgent matter to the little fishing village. So the priest called all parties together for a raffle, and the united effort yielded 70,000 lire. Then dissension began. The Communists and the Christian Democrats each wanted sole credit for restoring the people's clock. They battled each other step by step through a fog of imprecations and Marxian dialectic until, via interminable compromises, the clock was eventually restored...
...Giuliano, Meldolesi hinted to Italian editors that the celebrated "Robin Hood of Sicily" had invited him to his hideout. Only Editor Edilio Rusconi of Milan's weekly Oggi (Today) fell for Meldolesi's story. Rusconi assigned a top reporter to work with him, paid 800,000 lire (about $1,300) for the promised beat...
Prince of Foxes (20th Century-Fox] is probably Hollywood's most ambitious attempt to exploit actual locations. To recreate the look of Renaissance Italy, veteran Director Henry King & company spent six months and $4,500,000 (about half of it in the studio's frozen Italian lire). They fanned out to 14 Italian cities and towns and to the tiny mountain republic of San Marino, which 20th Century-Fox rented, complete with population, at $40 a day. No expense or trouble was spared; to help create a 15th Century view of the domes and canals of Venice...
Since 1888, regulated, police-supervised prostitution has been a source of state revenue in modern Italy. Today the Ministry of the Interior collects an annual n to 13 billion lire a year in fees from 722 brothels employing nearly 4,000 girls...
Like Enemy Airplanes. Bordello-keepers united against the anti-brothel bill and raised a 60 million lire ($96,000) fighting fund. In one house in Milan, any customer signing a petition against the bill was awarded one free visit. The girls and the worried madam in a swank Naples house appealed to venerable Senator Benedetto Croce, Italy's foremost philosopher, to block the bill "so that they too might have a prosperous holy year." Letters against the bill poured in on Senator Merlin, who had herself toured Rome's brothels to collect ammunition for her side...