Italian Citizenship by Descent

You qualify for Italian citizenship by descent if you have an Italian ancestor (of any generation — there is no limit) and the citizenship line was never broken. The line is broken when an Italian ancestor naturalized in another country BEFORE the next child's birth. If they naturalized AFTER (or never naturalized), the line is intact.

Before 1948, Italian women could not transmit citizenship to their children. The 1948 Republican Constitution granted equal rights, and the 2009 Cassazione ruling opened the judicial '1948 path' for descendants of Italian women who gave birth before January 1, 1948.

Consular filing: Submit your application at the Italian consulate with jurisdiction over your place of residence. Wait times at popular consulates (New York, London, São Paulo) can be 2-4 years. No travel to Italy required.

Judicial filing (1948 cases): File a petition in the civil court of Rome. Available for descendants of Italian women who gave birth before January 1, 1948. Typically completes in 12-24 months — faster than consular filing. The petitioner does not need to attend — Italian counsel represents them.

The Italian CBD dossier requires: certified long-form birth certificates for each person in the line, marriage certificates, the Italian ancestor's birth certificate from their commune (atto di nascita from the anagrafe), naturalization records (or a USCIS 'no record' letter for US residents), apostilles on all foreign documents, and certified sworn translations into Italian.

Our network of genealogists retrieve the Italian records from the relevant commune, and our network handles apostilles, translations, and dossier compilation.