Roots

The records, and where they live

This section does not sell passports. Most descendants no longer qualify for citizenship, and the sites still promising otherwise have not read the 2026 ruling. What is still there, and always will be, is the paper: the town, the register, the handwriting, the names.

Last checked 2026-09-12
Guide

Where Italian records actually live

Civil registration did not start on the same date across Italy, and that one fact decides how far back you can go

Guide

What the 2025 law changed

Citizenship by descent after Law 74/2025 and the Constitutional Court ruling of March 2026

When the archive guides go up

The records section grows a guide at a time: how to write to a comune, what the military draft lists say about a man's face, which dialect your grandparents actually spoke. Subscribers get each one as it lands, and Twelve Towns now.

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