Italian playing cards

Playing cards (in Italian: carte da gioco) have been in Italy since the late 14th century. Until the mid 19th century, Italy was composed of many smaller independent states which led to the development of various regional patterns of playing cards; "Italian suited cards" normally only refer to cards originating from northeastern Italy around the former Republic of Venice, which are largely confined to northern Italy, parts of Switzerland, Dalmatia and southern Montenegro. Other parts of Italy traditionally use traditional local variants of Spanish suits, French suits or German suits.

As Latin-suited cards, Italian and Spanish suited cards use swords (spade), cups (coppe), coins (denari), and clubs (bastoni). All Italian suited decks have three face cards per suit: the fante (Knave), cavallo (Knight), and re (King), unless it is a tarocchi deck in which case a donna or regina (Queen) is inserted between the cavallo and re. Popular games include Scopa, Briscola, Tressette, Bestia, and Sette e mezzo.

Playing cards arrived from Mamluk Egypt during the 1370s. Mamluk cards used suits of cups, coins, swords, and polo-sticks. As polo was an obscure sport, Italians changed them into batons. Italy was a collection of small states so each region developed its own variations. Southern Italy was under strong Spanish influence so their cards closely resemble the ones in Spain. Northern Italian suits used curved swords instead of straight ones and their clubs are ceremonial batons instead of cudgels. Swords and clubs also intersect unlike their Spanish counterparts.

Tarot cards were invented during the early 15th century in northern Italy as a permanent suit of trumps (trionfi). Italian-suited cards are rarely found outside of Northern Italy. In the past, however, tarot cards based on those from Milan, the Tarot of Marseilles, spread to France and Switzerland in the 16th century and later to Austria and parts of Western Germany in the 18th century before being replaced by French-suited tarots during the 18th and 19th centuries. In a few places in Switzerland, the Italian-suited Swiss 1JJ Tarot is still used for games.

The Venetian game of Trappola also spread northwards to Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Poland until dying out in the mid-20th century. The Greek word for playing card, "Τράπουλα", is a transliteration of Trappola. It may have entered into the Greek language from the Venetian-occupied Ionian Islands during the 16th century. In Corfu, Aspioti-ELKA produced Venetian pattern cards until the Greco-Italian War.

40-card stripped decks lacking the 8s, 9s, and 10s are the most common format found in Italy today. This is the result of popular 16th and 17th century games like Primero and Ombre. From the second half of the twentieth century, some Italian manufacturers have added a pair of Jokers but not to stripped decks.

Until 1972, all decks of playing cards sold in Italy had to bear a stamp showing that the manufacturer had paid the appropriate amount of tax. This led to a characteristic of most regional Italian designs in having a particular card (generally the Ace of Coins) either having a blank circle in the design, or having only a small amount of artwork compared with the rest of the deck. In addition to this, most Spanish-suited regional styles have the Ace of Coins including an eagle. This style of design has persisted, even after the discontinuation of the tax stamp requirement.

The (northern) Italian traditional card designs are closely related to the Spanish, sharing the same suits of cups, coins, swords and clubs. However, there are notable visual differences, including that the clubs are drawn as straight ceremonial batons, rather than as rough cudgels (or tree branches) as in a Spanish-suited deck, and that the swords are curved like a scimitar as opposed to a European sword like in the Spanish-suited deck. Furthermore, the Cups in northern Italian designs tend to be more angular, often hexagonal, as opposed to the circular goblet with handles in Spanish-suited designs.