Florin << FLAWR uhn >> is a type of coin first made in the Italian city of Florence in 1252. Made of gold, the florin weighed about an eighth of an ounce (3.5 grams). Florins became popular for trade during the economic expansion of Europe from the 1200’s to the 1400’s. The coin’s name comes from an Italian word meaning little flower. It refers to a lily, the symbol of Florence. A lily appears on one side of the coin. The other side has a figure of Saint John the Baptist, the guardian saint of Florence. Florence stopped making florins in the early 1500’s. But many European countries produced their own versions of the florin. In 1849, the United Kingdom issued its first silver florin, worth 2 shillings, or a 10th of a pound. In 1971, the United Kingdom switched to decimal currency, a system of money based on multiples of 10. The florin continued to circulate with a value of 10 pence until 1993. Florin was also another name for the guilder, a unit of money used in the Netherlands until the country replaced it with the euro, the European Union currency, in 2002.
