If you are considering applying to Italian citizenship due to family descendents, you must know that it might be a really long road but we promise it is 100% worth it.
How to begin it is one of the most stressful parts. Trying to rebuild your family tree in a legal way that shows enough evidence for Italian authorities sounds challenging. However, thanks to the internet, nowadays it has become easier.
Several non-profit organizations, in conjunction with the Italian government, have worked in free access online platforms that provide information and documents, such as birth certificates, death certificates, among others.
How to begin?
There are different ways of looking for documentos in italy. It will all depend on how much information you have about your Italian ancestors.
First step, and usually the most helpful one, will be to speak with your family. It may amaze you how much you can learn from a conversation over coffee with your grandparents, an aunt or uncle, even with your parents!. You will get to know a lot about your family while having a good time.
Once you have basic information such as name, last name, place of birth, maybe the year they left Italy, you can grab your computer and start your research online.
Take advantage of specialized assistance to secure your passport for a borderless future.
Main online resources
As mentioned before, in order to make Italian history and information more accessible worldwide, different non-profit organizations, for the last few decades, started to work with the italian government creating different online search portals. The most used ones are the following:
Family Search
Operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest genealogy organization in the world.
By creating a free account on their website, you will have access to different records, images and family trees. Only by using name, year and country of birth.
Portale Antenati
Managed by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, this website allows users to research and find information from your relatives using different criterias like place of birth, region, or province.
It is constantly being updated and you can access it in several languages. There is also a Frequent Asked Questions section to assist you before you start.
Italian Parish Records
Before civil registration was established in Italy, most of the records were kept by the Catholic Church. In this case, Italian Parish Records can help you.
Among the records on their website, you will usually find baptisms (battesimi), marriages (matrimoni), and burials (sepolture).
Different types of online records
Information might come in different formats.
- It could be digital images for civil or church records, without transcriptions.
- Spreadsheets or lists without attachments to the actual images, just basic information.
- Or maybe as directories of the records in images format.
The important thing is to understand that no matter how we get the information, we are one step closer to achieve what we are looking for.
Once I found the documents, what’s next?
It is important to understand that the online research for Italian documents only provides us with information or images. However, this is not official.
Once we have all the knowledge we need, it is time to request the actual document to the Italian authority (government, church or comune) who will proceed with the official copy to be used for our citizenship application.
Take advantage of specialized assistance to secure your passport for a borderless future.
