Path to Italian Dual Citizenship

These are photos of our great grandfathers through whom we obtained Italian citizenship with jure sanguinis. Both were fathers of the fathers of our mothers. They immigrated to the USA from Italy in the early 20th century.

Summary ~ Overview ~ Jure Sanguinis ~ Naturalization ~

Be prepared ~ Resources ~ Update 2011 ~ Update 2021 ~ Update 2022 ~ Update 2025

Summary

Years 2010 - 2011

We both applied for Italian citizenship through jure sanguinis. We're close, but not quite there. Last month, we sent in a few missing pieces of information. At this time, our applications are being processed. That’s all we know.  

Years 2021 and beyond

See the updates for how our story played out and recent changes, especially and unfortunately the 2025 new laws severely restricting paths to citizenship.

You can consider this post as an example of how it use to be before 2025.

Overview

Our initial appointments to review our applications and associated paperwork for Italian citizenship took place two months ago. We had each requested our consulate appointments via email. Submitted within minutes of another, the earliest dates they had available were over a year and a half later and exactly a week apart. Does the consulate process only one application per week? Not all consulates have the same lead time or appointment scheduling. Here’s a list of Italian consulates in the U.S. You must work with the one that serves the area you live in. We opted for “mail-in review” since we don’t live near the consulate office in San Francisco which serves the Northwest.

The idea of dual Italian citizenship came to us in 2007 as we were planning our sabbatical to Italy. Part of the sabbatical then became a quest to gather the necessary paperwork – and there is no shortage of that. For our 2007 trip we decided that Visas were the best strategy and so we got them for that trip.

If your family members live in the same consular jurisdiction as you, and are interested in citizenship, then seriously consider combining efforts and doing the citizenship interview together. For example, if your sister or brother wants to apply for citizenship, the only difference between your paperwork and theirs may be an additional birth certificate. Again, check with the consulate that serves your area.

Jure Sanguinis

We engaged the Italian Consulate in San Francisco under whose jurisdiction Seattle comes. If you look at the forms section of the site, you’ll see a form called Application for Italian citizenship “Jure Sanguinis” (link as of today). What’s jure sanguinis? I’ll quote from a story of someone who did gain dual-citizenship:

Jure sanguinis - the Latin phrase meaning “continuity of blood” or “by the right of blood” - is the right of citizenship under Italian Nationality Law by virtue of one’s ancestry. As with many aspects of Italian and Italian-American life and culture, the rules surrounding Italian citizenship jure sanguinis are complex and, in some cases, counterintuitive. [source: article by Michael Votto]

Now back to the Jure Sanguinis form. To find it, go to the San Francisco Consulate web site; go to the part of the web site dealing with citizenship. There is a form called Jure Sanguinis. There are a number of ways to claim Jure Sanguinis. To illustrate by way of example, we’ll focus on what was relevant for us. For Travelmarx (both of us) option #5 applies which is:

Your paternal or maternal grandfather was born in the United States, your paternal or maternal great grandfather was born in Italy and was an Italian citizen at the time of your paternal or maternal grandfather’s birth, neither you nor your father/mother nor your grandfather/grandmother ever renounced your right to Italian citizenship.

In each of our cases, our Italian bloodlines are most easily proven via our paternal great grandfathers (pictured above). So one reads down to the section applying to option 5 and finds this list of required documents:

1. Your paternal/maternal GREAT GRANDFATHER’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
2. Your paternal/maternal GREAT GRANDMOTHER’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
3. Your paternal/maternal GREAT GRANDPARENTS’ MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
4. Your paternal/maternal GREAT GRANDFATHER’S CERTIFICATE OF NATURALIZATION
5. Your paternal/maternal GRANDFATHER’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
6. Your paternal/maternal GRANDMOTHER’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
7. Your paternal/maternal GRANDPARENTS’ MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
8. Your father’s BIRTH CERTIFICATE
9. Your mother’s BIRTH CERTIFICATE
10. Your parents’ MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
11. Your BIRTH CERTIFICATE
12. Your APPLICATION AND YOUR DECLARATION THAT YOU AND YOUR ASCENDANTS NEVER RENOUNCED ITALIAN CITIZENSHIP BEFORE ANY ITALIAN AUTHORITY (Attachments: 2A - 2B)
13. DEATH CERTIFICATE/S RELATING TO THE ITALIAN BORN ASCENDANTS ONLY.
14. ORIGINAL AND COPY OF YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE

Documents 1 -3 were obtained directly from Italian sources. We actually got these documents in person (for example in Palermo and Piemonte). (It goes without saying, but you should get multiple copies of these documents.) Documents 4 – 13 are all U.S. documents. Some documents such as your birth certificate will need to have an apostille attached. An apostille is a legalization provided by the Office of the Secretary of State of the state in which the document is issued. The path to getting an apostille for any given document will depend on the state in which the document was issued. For example, to get a New York birth certificate apostilled you first have to get a letter of exemplification before the apostille. (See this informative post.) The place you apply to get your records will be different than the place you have them apostilled so there’s lots of researching of government agencies on the Internet, calling, mailing and otherwise running around. It’s part of the experience.

Naturalization

Document #4 in the required documents list, the certificate of naturalization, proved to be a bit tricky. In our original applications, we sent copies of our great-grandfather's naturalization certificates. (One of our great grandfather’s certificate copy came from family records the other came from Homeland Security records, a C-File.) However, these copies turned out to not be sufficient even though we thought we were following the instructions closely. Here’s the email response we received back from the consulate indicating specifically what they required:

Either the original of your ancestor’s naturalization certificate or a certified copy of what the National Archives has on file concerning his acquiring US citizenship. They will not certify the certificate, but they will certify all the rest, including the oath, which is what we need. It will have a red ribbon on it. If you send the original, you will need to enclose a pre-paid self-addressed USPS envelope for the return of the document to you. We do not accept any other form of pre-paid mail.

So we both went to the National Archives site and ordered up red ribbon copies. One of our great grandfathers was naturalized in a federal court (in New York) so the National Archives had all the supporting documentation including his oath of allegiance. The other great grandfather was eventually naturalized in Riverside County Superior court (California) and so the National Archives red ribbon copies provided some supporting documentation (his first applications via federal courts which were denied). And Riverside County Superior court archives delivered the essential documents attesting to his naturalization there. Confusing? Kind of. You just have to go with the process and find out what works.

Be prepared

The short ½ of Travelmarx had to provide, in addition to the items above, a copy of a US passport and a statement (in email) that he was never married. It’s odd because the taller ½ of Travelmarx did not have to provide that information. The other items that the shorter ½ of Travelmarx had to provide were copies of the marriage certificate and divorce decree for a first marriage of his mother. Point of the this: be prepared.

Resources

The article by Michael Votto [link] enumerates a few pros and cons of dual (Italian) citizenship. The pros: a passport from a country that is a member of the European Union (E.U.) means you live, travel, and work more freely in any E.U. country. Other possible benefits include healthcare, the ability to purchase property, and the right to pass on citizenship to heirs. The cons: tax liabilities (generally equitable, but filing will be more complex if you have foreign income), possible military responsibilities, and more trouble getting a U.S. security clearance. To tell you the truth, we don’t know which of these pros or cons will be a joy or pain because it’s still early in the process.
The United States government’s position on dual citizenship: they recognize it but don’t encourage it stating that:

The U.S. Government recognizes that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it as a matter of policy because of the problems it may cause. Claims of other countries on dual national U.S. citizens may conflict with U.S. law, and dual nationality may limit U.S. Government efforts to assist citizens abroad. The country where a dual national is located generally has a stronger claim to that person's allegiance. [U.S. Department of State Web site]

Finally, a great resource for Italian info and citizenship is Expat Talk, and this guy has a nice and recent story about his successful dual citizenship quest.

A Word About Services That Claim to Assist You

Be careful! If you search for “Italian citizenship” on the Internet you’ll find lots of services offering to gather the documents for you and perhaps shepherd them through the process. We initially tried one and it was a waste of time and money. We recommend that you don’t use them. It’s better to manage the paperwork yourself. It may be challenging at times but can be made easier by getting support from the forums or folks that have already done it.

Update January 2011

We now both have our citizenship confirmed with a letter from the consulate. Hooray! One notice came months ago and the other came recently. We are attaching the redacted notice (2 pages) below to show what it looks like. Here's post on getting passports.

Update 2021

It's 2021 and it's hard to believe it's been 10 years since this post was written. Since then, we moved to Italy, established residency, and obtained our national identity cards and health cards. All of this comes with expected and unexpected consequences that we discovered along the way. For example, how taxes work. (We pay taxes in both countries and it's complicated. In the future, we'll write more on this subject.) 

Despite the times we were ready to throw in the towel and call it quits, we persevered and now live in Italy. We like to think our great grandfathers pictured at the beginning of this post would be proud. But then again, they left Italy for a reason and maybe they would find it bizarre that we returned?

Friends joke with us and say we are living a "postcard-life" and that we are "living the dream". That makes us chuckle. Whose dream? What dream? We just followed our instincts and curiosity, and that led us here. 

Update 2022

CNN article Want to become Italian? The 007 of lost Italian documents may be able to help

Update 2025

The Tajani Decree (Decree-Law 36/2025) introduces significant changes to Italian citizenship laws, particularly affecting those seeking citizenship by descent (jure sanguinis). This change went into effect in March 2025. We'll try to write more about it, but if we were applying today, we would not have been able to get citizenship.

The most important parts are

• Stricter Eligibility: Citizenship by descent is now limited to two generations—meaning only children and grandchildren of Italian citizens born abroad qualify.
• Residency Requirement: If a child is born abroad, their Italian parent must have lived in Italy for two consecutive years before their birth and still held Italian citizenship at that time.

Reason for the change? According to the Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale: a flood of applications that were overwhelming the system where applicants are more interested in the value of the passport rather than citizenship. This seems to be the case especially with Argentina and Brazil. Quoting from the link above: "For example, Argentina increased from approximately 20,000 recognitions in 2023 to 30,000 the following year. Brazil rose from over 14,000 recognitions in 2022 to 20,000 last year.".

Our Name in History Books – A Critical Review

Ancestry.com offers customized books providing a historical look at your family surname. The books are called Our Name in History. The innovative idea is that they send you a book customized for a name you specify. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, it is sort of. It depends on where you are in your family history research and how much you want to know about your family. The bottom line is that these books are interesting from a high level point of view but can lead you astray in any sort of specific details about your family. 

I recently received, as a gift, four of these books each customized for four last names of one of my parents. The names are Bruno, Orobello, Maiuri, and Vinti. I was eager to look at them and try to make sense of the data. The more I looked through the books however, the more I realized that I could draw really wrong conclusions given the data presented. I can say this because I already know a fair bit about the family members with these names. 

Behind these books are “billions of historical records covering hundreds of years of history”. I’ve worked with enough data to know that it doesn’t mean much if you don’t have the right context or the data is not relevant. To Ancestry.com’s credit, they try to give context to the data, but they do it by pairing a very broad historic context on a specific subject (like marriage in the 1920s) with very specific family data (like which states had the highest divorce rates for people with the Bruno surname). Sounds fine, but looking at the percentages for the Bruno name I see very round numbers like 25%, 50% and 0% which leads me to suspect that the number of data points used was too small and they shouldn’t be saying anything at all about this subject. 

I suspect that the creation of the books is highly automated and that no one is considering your family name specifically and choosing what goes into your book. Given this, it’s no mystery that an automated generation process with access to billions of bits of information can lead to weird results. In some cases the data is not even correct. For example, a table listing places of origins for the Bruno name lists Palermo and Naples as countries. You may say, oh an oversight, but if you can’t get the basics right, how can you trust other data? 

It’s not all suspect. There are some tables and charts that are interesting. For example, a graph of the number of Bruno immigrant arrivals from 1820 to 1940 is interesting but only because there are enough data points to make the graph interesting. But, then again with another name, Maiuri, the graph looks like shark teeth – jagged – since it was dealing with 1 or 2 people immigrating sporadically. This was not a particularly useful graph. On the very same page there is a “most common days of arrival” for the Maiuri name. I learned that the they arrived mostly on Tuesday, Thursday and Monday. What does that tell me? That they were busy on weekends? Similarly useless is the killers of Brunos between 1850 and 1880: trismus nascentium, pyemia, pleurisy, cynanche, consumption – with the cool part that these diseases got together and each decided to kill only 20% of the Brunos a piece. Very democratic diseases or general historic estimates? 

The layout of the book are as so: 

Introduction 

A two page introduction to the book. 

Historical Timeline
A two page spread of key events from 1840 to the present with callouts for facts about your family. 

 

Family Facts 

The bulk of each book’s content is in this section. The number of pages will vary from name to name. For the Bruno name it runs about 60 pages. For the Maiuri name, a less common surname, this section is just 44 pages. The difference in the number of pages is due to the fact that there may be no or little information to justify a particular section. For example, if there is no information for a section title Name Distribution in 1840, then your customized book will leave out that page or two. This typical flow of content in this section of the book is one page of general information, e.g. one page on the voyage to America followed by another page (usually an adjacent page) where you’ll see a table listing the most common ship names that people with the specific surname arrived on. 

Discover Your Family 

The last 16 pages are about how to gather and organize information about your family. This section seems to be the same for all books. It’s fairly informative but not that much different from what you can find elsewhere other than it is all in one convenient location. 

Additional Material 

Two CDs. One is Our History in Images and the other is Family Tree Maker / Starter Edition. The first CD didn’t work on my laptop in Windows Vista. When I tried to autoplay a cryptic access violation message appeared. By drilling down into the CD I could see photos that I could browse, but was missing the context that the packaged viewer (viewer.exe) would provide. Too bad because it looked interesting. Advantages of the book:

• The historical context is useful for those who are not acquainted at all with history or have not done any previous family history research.
• For someone well versed in his family history, the book could (with careful attention) help confirm or rule out some uncertain parts of his family history.
• The last section has resources and web sites all in one spot that can help you take the next step.

Disadvantages of the book:

• You won’t learn much of substance about your family unless you are forced to dig and hunt for information yourself. Sorry, there’s no easy way out. No pain, no gain. Reading relatively “high-level” information in a book like this doesn’t tell you the specifics of your family. Talk to people in your family – you’ll get more relevant information. Or, if there is no one to talk to there are loads of places to start looking (like cemetery records, naturalization records, city halls, etc.) – it just takes more effort.
• The production of these books is highly automated and data is crunched through algorithms to spit out these tables and graphs. It’s not all useful or relevant and at times the data presented can be misleading and give you a false feeling about “knowing” what your family was like.
• The book mingles nostalgic, misty-eyed immigration information with seemingly personalized information about a family name. I found the formula a bit calculated to use any sentiment of the larger story to gloss over they were lacking in concrete information.

Recommendation: If you are just starting out in family history research and you have money to spare, try one of these books for one surname. Compare information in the book about what you find out for yourself. 

(My) New York Family Research

I visited two cemeteries to see plots of great grandparents that I never knew, surnames: Vinti and Bruno. The two cemeteries are: St John Cemetery at 90-01 Metropolitan Avenue, Middle Village, New York (location) and Calvary Cemetery, 49-02 Laurel Hill Blvd, Woodside, New York (location). Both were accessible (with a few blocks of walking by subway/train from midtown). I did take a taxi from St. John to Calvary (too far to walk).

For any cemetery visit, stop at the main office first and save yourself time if you don’t know what you are looking for. I didn’t know where to even look so a stop at the office was necessary. I found out that a typical plot (marked with a headstone) that my great grandparents have are stacked 3 high (as in coffins). In both sets of relatives, there remains space since only a husband and wife are buried there. Who inherits the plot? All living descendants. At St John, the very helpful Polly explained the whole thing to me. Makes sense. I also filed for a maintenance request because of rampant hosta plant from a neighboring plot totally obscured my relatives.

The trick at Calvary is to figure out what part of Calvary you need to go to. There is Calvary 1, 2, 3, and 4. Parts 2-4 are close, but 1 (the oldest part) is a bit far from the other two parts. Part 1 is for old, old burials. Most likely you’ll be looking in Parts 2 - 4. The main office for Calvary is in Part 2 anyway. Apparently there are 3+ million people buried there.

One question that entered my mind when looking at the aerial photo of Queens is why are there so many cemeteries? Apparently, the area is called the Cemetery Belt and there is a good reason for it. It is because of the Rural Cemetery Act passed in 1847 in New York which commercialized the burial process.

Results: success on both accounts. Both plots were located and I spent some quality time with my great grandparents on a very hot New York summer afternoon.

New York Public Library – Genealogy Section

 

We are impressed by the New York Public Library 5^th Avenue. It’s the branch with the two famous lions out front. The marble lions are called Patience and Fortitude. Today, during our visit there are two exhibitions going on. The first exhibition is: Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City (May 2 – August 29, 2008). The second is a display of a number of landmark versions of the Declaration of Independence including an autographed manuscript prepared by Thomas Jefferson in the week following the 4^th of July, 1776. His copy had underlined items that he noticed were missing from an early copy he submitted. Both exhibits are free and interesting.

The genealogy section of the New York Public Library is in Room 121. They have a variety of resources and computer access. We got a couple of leads but nothing specific to add to our existing family trees. But, if you are just starting off your genealogy quest, stop by and ask the librarians what you should be looking at. They have a handy handout sheet (below) that lists a number of resources. If even just to sit there and search the database with the free computers, it’s worth a stop in this room.

Final stop: the grand reading room. Magnificent.

 

 

Doing Family Research in Palermo

We were in Palermo over Easter doing some family research. This post can be considered part II of the previous post On-the-Ground Italian Family Research. Let me just breathe a sigh of relief and say that we got everything we needed and everyone we worked with was helpful.

Anagrafe Information

Here is some information about the anagrafe offices (link 1 and link 2). They are in Italian. Unfortunately, they don't tell you the most important thing which is that the office for old records is right across from the main train station, conveniently located. It’s a grayish, formidable looking building with brown signage above the windows saying “Muncipio di Palermo”. During off hours, you can’t really look in any windows because everything is shut up. Normal hours are something like 8:30 to 1:30 (check to confirm). When you enter through a gate on the side of the building (away from the ocean) there are several doors to choose from. One door is the place you pick up previously requested information or things that are already in the computer. It’s the “sportello”. The other door has a security guard inside and that’s where you should go if you need to do research. You want to ask the guard to take you to door #6. It’s just to the left of the elevator past the guard post. Below is a picture of the building with the main train station in the background.


Once inside the door, you meet someone there and you can state what you need. As usual, having all the information on one or more sheets of paper and easy to read will help. Also be prepared to take notes as it will help to record dates and volume/number from the index (more below).

You can get photocopies for just a few cents apiece or you can ask for an extract. The extract might take a day or so to process since the information has to be typed into the computer. Then you can just go to the sportello and have the extract printed out.

Note that the first step the person helping you will take is to consult the indexes. The indexes are listing by date of births, deaths, marriages that list the volume (located elsewhere in the office) where the actual information is. Pictured below is the shelf that contains the index information from the 1800s.


Palermo Cemetery Information

There are four main cemeteries in Palermo (that we know of): Capuchin (location), Santa Maria de Gesù (location), Sant’Orsola (location), and Rotoli (location). We found staff on hand always to answer our questions, so stop at the main office (near the main entrance) and begin by asking someone to check the records. You can do this at all four cemeteries discussed here.

The Capuchin Catacombs is a huge tourist attraction because of the mummies in the basement – so to speak. The entrance to the touristy part is different but close to the main entrance to the cemetery. Just inside the gate to the right is an office where you can ask someone to look in the records. You need date of death and name. The Capuchin cemetery is just east of the city center. You can walk to it from the main train station in about 35 minutes.

Sant’Orsola is not as much of a tourist attraction, though I think there is a church inside (Santo Spirito) that is listed in some of the guide books. Again, you can walk from the central train station to the cemetery in about 20 minutes. A plan of the cemetery is shown below.


Santa Maria de Gesù is located quite a bit south of the city. Take a taxi or a bus(#210 from bay #2 in front of the main train station – for more info on buses see http://www.amat.pa.it/).

Rotoli is located quite a bit north of the city. Take a taxi or a bus (#139 from bay #1 in front of the main train station). This is the largest of the cemeteries and the most likely place to look. A plan of the cemetery is shown below. The sad thing here is that a fire wiped out all records before 1933 – this ultimately sank our search because we were looking for someone before this date. However, not is all is lost, because in most cases you can search for a related family member who died after 1933 and then use this to help locate the ancestor who died before 1933.

Note that the main office for the cemetery is where Via Papa Sergio turns into Via Vergine Maria (a truly miraculous kind of conversion :-)).

On-the-Ground Italian Family Research

By “on-the-ground” we mean being in Italy and visiting the places your relatives came from. There is a lot you can do online and via e/mail which isn’t discussed here. A few tips that we developed on an 8 day trip to Piemonte are shown below and broken into two sections: anagrafe and cemetery research. We’ll be doing more family research outside of Rome and in Palermo in the coming months, so we’ll test these ideas furthers to see if they need tweaking.

Anagrafe research:

1. It helps if you can speak a little Italian. Useful terms are, 'Atto di Nascita' (birth certificate), 'Atti di Matrimonio' (marriage), 'Certifica' (certficate), to ask where the cemetery is ("Dove il cimitero?"), and to describe how a person is related to you, "bisnonno" (grandfather), etc. If you don’t speak any Italian, have good documentation that someone can follow easily or perhaps hire someone to help. In Italian, relatives are “parenti” and parents are “genitori” - so you might want to get them straight when asking. The records are organized by date. So having the precise birthdate or marriage date handy is a real winner. Note that the public records only go back to 1860 or so when Italy was unified as a country. Before then, parish (Parrocchia) records are your best bet (see below.) Also note that these records exist as large, hand written ledgers maintained independently in each town. In other words, you need to visit the anagrafe office in the specific town where the birth or marriage event took place.


2. The public records offices "uffizzi dello stato civile" are usually located near or in the equivalent of the town hall (e.g. “uffici comunali”) and the specific office for birth and marriage records is typically called the “anagrafe” office. Try to find out the hours before you go. For example, some offices are only open Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And most only from 9am to 12:30. You might take a picture of the office’s sign with the hours so you can remember it later. Don’t walk in 5 minutes before lunch. Give them ample time to find the records even if it only takes a few minutes - it’s about respecting their time.


3. In many of our experiences, the anagrafe worker simply walked into an adjacent room and took out a huge book and located the information within 2 minutes because we had very precise information on dates and names. By the way, some offices will let you feel and touch the book, maybe even photograph it. If you do, put a sheet of paper over other people’s info out of respect. Other offices won’t let you near the book, but may photocopy the page for you. Ask. Having the full record (as presented in the book) along with the typed-up or extracted information "Estratto", is preferred. There is often interesting information in the margins of the original document. However the 'Estratto' (extraction), signed and sealed by an 'officiale dello stato civile' is what you would need for official purposes.


4. Usually the anagrafe person will walk through the certificate with you. This is important (and this is where your Italian language skills can really help) because they can elucidate finer points of the information. The records are often written in a fancy script which is hard to read. For example, they helped us clarify information about the “frazione” or district of the city a relative came from. In another case, they knew the terms “celibre” or “nubile” on a marriage certificate that looked mysterious in script lettering. In other cases, they may point out where someone was born or what cemetery they are likely buried in.


5. One document (like a birth certificate or marriage certificate) often contains valuable information about the person or persons you are researching or their family. For example, on one marriage certificate we obtained, we discovered that the parents had lived in a town that we hadn’t considered. That then informed our cemetery searching.


6. Allow 1 day for every office or town you wish to collect information in. That includes birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, baptism records, finding tombs, etc.


7. Be patient. If you don’t get what you want the first day, you may the next. Be prepared to have the results sent to via mail.
   
8. When you walk into any office, don’t present a heaping pile of papers and expect the person behind the desk to figure it out. Be as precise as you can. Write the information down, legibly, on a piece of paper you can hand over. If the person wants other information, be ready to present it. We’ve found that everyone we encountered glad to help and interested in what we were doing and why we were doing it.
   
9. Besides anagrafe offices, there are parish offices "parrocchia" which can contain information. In one case in Ceva, we obtained the baptism record of an orphaned relative. The two ladies there were super nice and so pleased that people were looking up their ancestors. We didn't just stop there on a whim though. The anagrafe office had directed us there. So, start with anagrafe office and if you need more info, ask if the parrocchia might have it (if they don't already suggest it).

Cemetery research:

1. Grab a map of the city when you go into city’s public offices. Almost every anagrafe office we went to had a map of the city which showed churches and cemeteries. This will be useful in your cemetery hunt.


2. Cemeteries have hours too! It depends on the town/city. Some are open continuously from 8 am to 6pm with no attendants. Some were around lunch – usually these are the ones with a custodian.


3. A town or city may have many cemeteries. The one of interest depends on many factors like where in the town the relatives were born or lived. Sometimes you just have to guess.


4. Walking into cemeteries, you may notice the same names over and over. If you don’t see your family name anywhere you could just be in the wrong cemetery. That happened to us in Cherasco which had several cemeteries. We went to a cemetery in the frazione San Bartolomeo of Cherasco because that’s where a relative was born and that’s all we had to go on. In the cemetery (which was small) the names were not at all similar and it became apparent that this particular relative wasn’t here. Later we found other information through marriage records that the correct cemetery was in Ceva .


5. Be respectful. Be quiet, walk slowly, and don’t touch everything. Yes you have to peek into larger family tombs to look for names, but be courteous. Don’t walk on the grass or on top of graves.


6. Bring good walking shoes, pen, paper, your documents, and a camera.


7. If there is a custodian of the cemetery, ask if there is a list or registry of who is buried there. This greatly helped us in Ceva. It shaved hours off our search. You'll need the approximate date of death.


8. If no one is in the cemetery to assist, organize you search logically. Assuming there are two of you, you might split up and search the big family tombs first by reading the names on top first (without reading the individual tomb names). Then hit the wall tombs, then maybe the ground burials. It depends on the setup.


9. If you locate a tomb of interest. Pull out your paperwork and either confirm or deny the relevancy. Don’t linger over something trying to decide if it is interesting or not. Take a photo of the tomb and figure it out later. In the beginning, we found that we were so interested in finding anything at all, that we were spending time deciphering tombs which really weren't relavent. Part of this stems from the fact that each town or region tends to have concentrations of specific family names and it was a bit overwhelming at first to see a normally rare family name almost everywhere we turned.


10. On each tomb or marker, there is usually a photo, take a close up picture of it if you can. Use a ladder to reach high tombs. Ladders are scattered around. Put them back in the correct location.


11. Take a picture of the cemetery layout (usually published by the front gate) for later reference and perhaps annotate to show someone else where the tomb is. Or record the location or reference number of the tomb.


12. In space constrained cemeteries - which is most of Italy, bodies may be exhumed after some period of time (20-25 years). If at the time, there was no interest from the family or perhaps money available, the remains may have been placed in a common bone vault. To help determine if this is the case, given a date of death, the cemetery records can help determine when or if the person was exhumed and moved.
    

Happy researching!