Picture 1: 1945 - 1983 (rear)
Picture 2: 1945 - 1983 (front)
Picture 3: 1983 - 1989
Plates of police were introduced in February 1941: previously they used normal civil plates or fascist plates and you can find a list of these among historical fascist plates.
Cars: all the plates of the police issued between 1945 and 1983 had the full word POLIZIA in red with characters of the same size of those used for the number (picture number 1), so, due to the length of the word, they had to be arranged in two lines. Only front plates were made of only one line and their size was much smaller (picture number 2). In 1983 front and rear plates became identical, with the characters of the word POLIZIA (about 1.2 inches) smaller than the characters of the numbers (about 2.4 inches), as you can see in the third picture. Last, in 1989 after the number 79999, the numbering system changed, with a letter in first position and it started again from A0000, but using the same look of the previous plates (picture number 4). Besides these major changes, in the past years there were also many minor "touching up", but only to the style of some numbers.
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Picture 1: 1945 - 1983 (rear) |
Picture 2: 1945 - 1983 (front) Picture 3: 1983 - 1989 |
Picture 4: 1989 - Today
Motorcycles: the plates of motorcycles of the police were always similar to those for cars and used the same numbering system, with the difference that they were square: you can find below some examples in chronologic order. At the beginning they had only a number and then, in 1989, a letter in first position was introduced. In the past the numbers of the plates of motorcycles were shuffled among the numbers of the cars, but recently the series from G0000 to G9999 was reserved.
 Picture 5: 1945 - 1983 (motorcycle) |
 Picture 6: 1945 - 1983 (motorcycle) |
 Picture 7: 1983 - 1989 (motorcycle) |
 Picture 8: 1989 - Today (motorcycle) |
Trailers: trailers have got the full print "rimorchio" (it means trailer) that sometimes is red, sometimes black. At the beginning the plate had 3 lines: "POLIZIA" on top, the number in the middle and "rimorchio" on bottom (sometimes on top). Then trailer plates were arranged in just two lines, with "POLIZIA" and the number on top and "rimorchio" on bottom. The numbering system of trailers is an exception because it uses just numbers between 20.000 and 21.999.
Picture 9: trailer plate
Test: police has also got some test plates. In the past the had the full print "PROVA" (test) in black, then they were replaced with plates similar to normal ones, but with a green P (picture number 10).
Picture 10: test plate
I want to thank Adolfo Arena for the pictures number 1, 2, 5 and 6, Marcello Taverna for the pictures number 3 and 7, Pietro for the picture number 9, and Roberto Grando for the last picture.
