Italian Ancestry

Why a roots trip

Roughly 16 million Americans claim Italian ancestry, and most descend from the great emigration between the 1880s and the 1920s, when millions left villages in Campania, Calabria, Sicily, Abruzzo, Basilicata, Molise and Puglia, as well as the Veneto, Friuli and Liguria. Many of those villages are still there, often smaller than when your great-grandparents left, with the same church, the same piazza and sometimes cousins who share your surname.

Finding the town is the hard part. Once you have it, Italian records are some of the richest in Europe, and much of it is now online for free. This page walks through the research, the trip and the citizenship question, which changed dramatically in 2025.

Start with US records

You cannot search Italian records until you know the comune (municipality) your ancestor came from. "Near Naples" or "Sicily" is not enough: Italy has nearly 7,900 comuni today, and records are kept town by town. The answer is almost always in American paperwork.

• Family papers. Old passports, prayer cards, letters with Italian return addresses, wedding certificates, photos with a studio name stamped on the back. Ask the oldest relatives first.
• Naturalization records. After 1906 the Declaration of Intention and Petition for Naturalization usually give the exact town and date of birth, plus the ship and arrival date. Find them through the National Archives, county courts or the USCIS Genealogy Program.
• Draft registration cards. WWI cards (1917–1918) and the WWII "old man's draft" (1942) often list the town of birth.
• Passenger manifests. The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation's free passenger search covers arrivals at the Port of New York. Manifests from about 1907 list the last place of residence and a relative left behind, which is gold.
• Census records. The 1900 to 1950 federal censuses give year of immigration and naturalization status, which narrows your manifest search.
• Social Security applications (SS-5), death certificates, obituaries and US parish records. Any of these may name the town or the parents.

Pinning down the town

Once you have a name, test it. American clerks wrote town names by ear, so "Sanfele" might be San Fele in Basilicata and "Castel Franco" could be one of several Castelfrancos. Check the province, which Italian documents usually give in parentheses, and look for the surname in that area's records before committing.

Three things confuse almost everyone:

• Frazioni (hamlets). Your family may have said they came from a hamlet, but the records sit in the parent comune's town hall.
• Renamed and merged towns. Many comuni changed names after unification in 1861 to distinguish duplicates, and hundreds have merged since. The old name may now be part of a new comune.
• Women's surnames. Italian women keep their maiden names in official records for life. Your great-grandmother appears as Maria Russo, wife of Giuseppe Esposito, not as Maria Esposito. This is a huge help in research.

Italian records: what exists and where

Italy's civil registration (stato civile) began under Napoleon in many areas from about 1806 and was standardized across the new country after 1865. In the old Kingdom of Naples, which covered most of the south, registration ran almost continuously from 1809, so southern records often go back further than northern ones. Sicily began in 1820. Most of central and northern Italy has civil records from 1866, and the Veneto from 1871.

The Antenati portal

The Portale Antenati (the Ancestors Portal), run by Italy's Ministry of Culture, publishes scanned civil registers held by the State Archives (Archivi di Stato). It is free, and the interface has an English option, though the records themselves are in Italian. You can search by name where volunteers have indexed records, or browse registers by archive, town, year and record type, which is how most people end up using it. New batches keep arriving; the portal's 24th release of registers came out on October 1, 2026.

Browsing tip: each year's register usually ends with an alphabetical index (indice), and many towns also have ten-year indexes (indici decennali). Jump to the index first, find the record number, then page back to the record.

FamilySearch

FamilySearch, the free genealogy site run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, filmed vast numbers of Italian civil and some parish records. Many are indexed and searchable by name, and many more are viewable as images. Because of agreements with the archives, some collections can only be viewed at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library, which includes many US public libraries. Its research wiki has detailed guides by region and record type.

Writing to the comune

For records not online, or for anything after about 1910, write to the town's civil registry office (Ufficio di Stato Civile) or, for a household record, the Ufficio Anagrafe. Most comuni list an email address and a certified email address (PEC) on their website.

1. Write in simple Italian. Keep it short. Online translation is fine if you check the names and dates.
2. Ask for one specific record per person: for example, a full copy (copia integrale) of the birth record of Giuseppe Esposito, born about 1885, son of Antonio and Maria Russo.
3. Explain that you are a direct descendant researching your family, and say whether you need the record for citizenship (which needs a certified copy) or for genealogy.
4. Be patient. A small town may have one clerk for every service. Expect weeks or months, and send one polite follow-up.

Parish records

Before civil registration, and in the gaps, the Catholic parish is your source. Baptism registers can take a family back to the 1600s or earlier, and the stato delle anime (status of souls), a periodic household census by the priest, is a gem where it survives. Older registers are in Latin. Many have been moved from the parish to the diocesan archive (archivio diocesano). Write to the parish or diocese, offer a donation, and do not be surprised if access requires a visit or a local researcher.

Reading the records

Nineteenth-century records are handwritten, often on preprinted forms after the 1860s. You will start recognizing the patterns within an hour. A small vocabulary goes a long way:

• nato/nata: born. morto/morta: died. sposi: the married couple.
• figlio/figlia di: son/daughter of. fu before a name: the late (deceased) person.
• contadino, bracciale, giornaliero: farmer or day laborer, the most common occupations. calzolaio: shoemaker. sarta: seamstress.
• esposto, proietto or trovatello: a foundling, often given an invented surname. If you hit one, the trail usually ends there.
• In Latin parish records: baptizavi (I baptized), infantem (infant), filium/filiam (son/daughter), quondam (the late).

See useful Italian for pronunciation and more basics.

Getting help

If you get stuck, a professional genealogist based in Italy can visit archives, read difficult handwriting and talk to the parish. Fees vary widely, so ask for a written quote and a scope of work. Italian-American genealogy societies and online groups for specific regions and towns are full of experienced volunteers who know local archives and quirks.

Italy has also invested in what it calls roots tourism (turismo delle radici). The government named 2024 the Year of Italian Roots and runs a program called Italea, with regional contacts who help descendants plan visits and connect with towns. Look it up for your region before you go; services differ from place to place.

Visiting your ancestral town

Standing in the piazza your family left a century ago moves even the least sentimental travelers. A little preparation turns it from a quick photo stop into a real visit.

Before you go

• Email the comune a few weeks ahead, in Italian, with your family names and dates. Ask if you may visit the records office and whether anyone could meet you. In small towns, the mayor (sindaco) sometimes comes to say hello.
• Contact the parish priest about seeing the church and its old registers.
• Look for the town's Pro Loco, the volunteer tourist association, which often knows who still carries your surname.
• Print copies of your key documents, a family tree and old photos. Locals will want to see them.
• Book a local guide or interpreter if your Italian is limited. Older residents may speak mostly dialect.

On the ground

Town halls keep short public hours, usually weekday mornings and one or two afternoons, so check before driving out. Many villages in the south and the Apennines have no train station and only a few buses a day, so plan to rent a car (see driving) or hire a driver. Stay in a nearby larger town or an agriturismo (farm stay); see where to stay.

Visit the cemetery, but adjust expectations. Italian graves are often leased for a set period, and old remains are moved to ossuaries, so you are unlikely to find a nineteenth-century headstone. The most rewarding time to visit is during the town's patron saint festival (festa patronale), often in summer, when emigrants' descendants return from Turin, Germany and Argentina. Your festival research may find the date.

Italian citizenship by descent: the 2025 change

For decades Italy was unusually generous. Under the principle of iure sanguinis (by right of blood), anyone with an Italian ancestor who emigrated after 1861 and did not naturalize elsewhere before the next generation's birth could be recognized as Italian, with no limit on generations. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, Argentines and Brazilians applied, and consulates and Italian courts were swamped.

That ended on March 28, 2025. Decree-Law 36/2025, converted with changes into Law 74/2025 in May 2025, rewrote the rules. People born abroad who hold another citizenship are now treated as never having acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of the exceptions below applies.

Who still qualifies

• People who applied in time. Anyone who filed a complete application at a consulate or comune, or a court case, by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on March 27, 2025, is assessed under the old rules. A related provision protects people who had a confirmed consular appointment communicated to them by that deadline.
• Children or grandchildren of an exclusively Italian citizen. If a parent or grandparent holds, or held at death, only Italian citizenship, you can still qualify. An Italian-born grandparent who became a US citizen does not meet this test, because they no longer held only Italian citizenship.
• Children of a parent who lived in Italy. If your Italian-citizen parent lived in Italy for at least two continuous years after becoming a citizen and before you were born or adopted, you qualify.

Mere personal declarations are not enough to prove exclusive citizenship or residence. Consulates ask for documents such as certificates showing an ancestor never naturalized, records of renunciation, or historical residence certificates from the comune.

The court challenges

The new law was challenged as unconstitutional, mainly on the argument that it stripped citizenship people had held since birth. After a public hearing on March 11, 2026, Italy's Constitutional Court announced on March 12 that it had rejected the questions raised by the Tribunal of Turin, finding them partly unfounded and partly inadmissible. That ruling confirmed the law's central structure, including the March 27, 2025 cut-off.

Other courts, including tribunals in Mantua and Campobasso, have referred further questions about specific parts of the law, and individual tribunals have reached differing results on edge cases. Few lawyers expect a return to the old unlimited system, but details may still shift. Treat any firm promise about your case with skepticism, and check the latest position with a qualified Italian citizenship lawyer before you spend money on documents.

Children and former citizens

The law also changed how children born abroad to citizens by descent become Italian. A transitional window for children who were already minors when the law took effect, in May 2025, closed on May 31, 2026. Going forward, an Italian parent can generally register a child born abroad by declaration within a year of birth, or the child qualifies after two years of legal residence in Italy; a €250 (about $280) contribution applies. Ask your consulate about your family's specific case.

Separately, former Italian citizens who were born in Italy, or lived there for two continuous years, and lost citizenship on or before August 15, 1992, typically by naturalizing in the US, can reacquire it by declaration between July 1, 2025 and December 31, 2027, with a €250 fee. This helps an elderly Italian-born relative; it does not automatically pass citizenship to their adult children.

How applications work now

1. Confirm you fit an exception before ordering documents. Start with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs citizenship page and your consulate's website.
2. Gather records: your ancestor's Italian birth record from the comune, US vital records for each generation, with apostilles from each issuing state and certified Italian translations, plus proof that the ancestor held only Italian citizenship (for example, a USCIS or court "no record" search for naturalization).
3. Apply at the Italian consulate covering your US residence, through its booking system. Waiting times at US consulates have historically been long. Adults pay a €600 (about $670) processing fee per application.
4. Alternatively, apply in Italy by taking up genuine legal residence in a comune, which is slower to arrange than it sounds and is checked by local police.

If you no longer qualify

Losing the descent route does not close every door. Foreign descendants of Italian citizens have long had a shortened path to naturalization after legal residence in Italy, much shorter than the standard ten years for non-EU nationals; confirm the current period with your consulate or a lawyer. A June 2025 referendum that would have cut the standard ten-year residency requirement to five failed for lack of turnout, so ten years remains the norm.

Marriage to an Italian citizen can lead to citizenship after a period of residence and an Italian language test at B1 level. And many people simply want to live in Italy for a while; for visas, the 90-day rule and the paperwork of daily life, see long stays in Italy. For the trip itself, start with planning, and if you want help building a roots itinerary around your town, our trip planning service can help.