Italy (in Italian Italia), officially the Italian Republic (Repubblica Italiana), is a southern European country that physically corresponds to a peninsula in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea and the two largest islands in that sea, Sicily and Sardinia. It is joined to the rest of the continent by the Alps.
Italy has made an immense contribution to Western civilisation, being the cradle of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance. Italy has existed as a state since its unification in 1861, and is now a parliamentary democracy and a founding member of the European Union (EU). Italy remains a major player on the international stage, with its sixty million inhabitants, the strength of its economy (it is the world's seventh largest economy) and its role in numerous international organisations (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), EU, G8, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)).
Embassy of Italy :
Emile Claus, 28
1050 Brussels
Tel: 0032 (0) 2 6433850
Fax: 0032 (0) 2 6485485
E-mail: ambit.bxl.politico@ibm.net
Website : www.ambbruxelles.esteri.it/Ambasciata_Bruxelles
Genealogical research in Italy
Parish registers date back to the 16th century and are generally kept in parishes, depending on the state of the peninsula. In 1866, the government nationalised civil registration, which was henceforth kept in duplicate in the commune, with the other copy in the local civil court.
- 20 regions (e.g. Piedmont, capital Turin)
- 98 provinces (provincia, equivalent to the Belgian provinces)
- 8,600 communes (municipalities, larger than in France, where there are around 36,000), each with its own town hall. Special feature: the communes are divided into frazione (hamlets, but with up to 2 or 3,000 inhabitants in the larger towns, more or less equivalent to a parish) and localita (localities).
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