How To Use Portale Antenati To Find Your Missing Family Member

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If you are searching for your Italian ancestors, you have surely come across Portale Antenati. And you may have noticed it’s not the easiest website to use.

This is partly because most records are not indexed and the images are written in old Italian cursive.

However, when you know a few tips for using this website, Portale Antenati becomes, true to its name, the “Doorway to your Ancestors”.

That is why I keep returning to Portale Antenati to search for my missing great-grandfather.

I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about how to use Portale Antenati efficiently to search the Italian Civil Records so that you can find your missing family members.

Learn the quickest way to start digging in, how to jump quickly to the page you are looking for, and what to do when you find and don’t find a hit. Let’s dig in!

How to use Portale Antenati. Screenshot of the homepage.

What Is Portale Antenati?

Portale Antenati, or just Antenati as it is often called, is an Italian genealogical website that contains images of the civil status records in books called registers from all across Italy.

Antenati is one of the genealogical websites you will use when you start searching for your Italian ancestors from home.

This is the URL: https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/

Civil status records are important life events like birth, marriage, and death written down by the government.

Books for each town contain civil records according to the type and year. Every page of each book has been photographed from the cover to the back page and uploaded so you can browse the registers online.

The site is free and you don’t need to create an account. You can choose which language (Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Dutch) to read the site in but the actual documents are handwritten in Italian cursive.

To understand what years are covered in which places (so you don’t go crazy when you realize the year you are searching for is missing), you need to know a little about the history of Italian record keeping.

Portale Antenati periods of recordkeeping. Different regions have different records.

A Brief History Of Italian Record-Keeping

From the 1500s through the 1800s, the Catholic Church recorded people’s vital or life events and kept the records for 95% of the population. Italian church records are also called Italian Parish Records.

Starting in the 1800s, civil status records began to be kept by the local governments. Antenati has digitized records from these 3 historical periods:

1806 to 1815: the Napoleonic Period. Napoleon controlled much of what is now Italy. He required people to register their civil status with the local governments. And, he required the governments to keep records of all the births, marriages, and deaths.

1815 to 1865: The Restoration Period. When Napolean was defeated in 1815, control returned to the local kingdoms. Each kingdom decided whether to continue with civil registrations or not.

1866 to the 1930s: Italian Civil Registration. Civil registration became mandatory again when Italy was finally unified in 1866 and continues to the present. Historical records on Antenati only go through the 1930s.

If you can’t find your town for certain years, now you know why! I learned this lesson the hard way searching for my great-grandfather. Start searching first by name and then by browsing the registers.

Screenshot of a result when searching by a specific name on Antenati.

Search By Name

When you land on the home page of Antenati, you can either search the registers or search by name.

Most records have not been indexed yet so you probably won’t find your ancestor by searching for name. But you should try this first just in case because if it’s there, you’ll save a lot of time.

Search by name and then select an indexed record. You will see an icon next to the word Atti. Below this, you will see the specific Atto with the date. Hover over it and click the hyperlink. The link will take you to the digitized record in the register book.

Searching by name is a long shot, but you never know what you’ll find so you might as well try it first. This is how I had my big breakthrough and discovered where my great-grandmother came from.

Next, start browsing the registers. This is where you will spend most of your time.

Portale Antenati screenshot of searching in the registers under the town Mologno. — Screenshot of searching in the registers for the location Mologno in Antenati.

A Guide To The Different Types Of Registers

After searching for your town, a list of all the registers will be listed. On the left, you will see Tipologia or Type below Località or Location. You can filter to choose just one type of register at a time.

Start with the 10-year indexes. These are books with lists of names in alphabetical order. The numbers in the columns after the names tell you which register book has the full record.

Keep a checklist of all the registers that you have gone through. After you search through all the 10-year indexes for the different categories, you can start searching in each category.

Here is what you will find in some of the different types of registers:

Cittadinanze – these are citizenship documents. I found my gg-grandfather here. He had asked the court if he could move to the next town over, a mile away. I don’t think they let him and now I’m investigating why. (New story coming soon! Spoiler alert – he was a foundling.)

Matrimoni Publicazione – These are Marriage Banns, or announcements, about upcoming ceremonies. They provide a wealth of information about your ancestors including their atti di nascita (birth acts).

Indici decennali – 10 year indexes. Very useful to figure out which actual book of nati, morti, and matrimoni to look in.

Nati – Births

Morti – deaths

Matrimoni – Marriages

Allegati – Supplemental information and supporting documents for marriages and other acts.

Portale Antenati screenshot showing 2 ways to see thumbnail images in the registers so you can jump to the page you want. — A screenshot showing two ways to view thumbnails in the registers in Portale Antenati.

View Thumbnails To Jump To The Page You Want

Once you have chosen a register to dig into, click the button on the right that looks like an open book and choose galleria. All the pages will load as thumbnails.

You can also do this by clicking on the hamburger on the left. You can have all the thumbnails showing on the left while looking at an actual page at the same time.

From here you can easily click the page you want. For example, click the index at the beginning of the book. Then jump to the exact page.

The gallery view allows you to see which pages are the beginning of new sections. You can jump to these pages which is especially useful if there is not an index in the book.

I Found A Hit – Now What?

Antenati seems difficult at first, but you will get the hang of it fast and when that happens you need to remember where you found things and stay organized. Here are some ways to stay organized:

Create a Google doc. Write a note about what you found. Then copy and paste the URL of the page containing the image of your record.

Screenshot the image and put that in your Google doc too.

Screenshot all or part of the image and ask Chat GPT to transcribe and translate it.

Make sure to compare the original to the ChatGPT transcription carefully because it can be very wrong.

You can also send your screenshot or URL link to your genealogy Facebook groups and ask someone to help you translate it.

Portale Antenati screenshot showing the status of digitization of the State Archive of Bergamo.

The Year I’m Looking For Is Not Online

Even with all the amazing records you can easily find on Antenati, the years you are looking for often do not exist online.

This is because of the history of Italian record keeping. Some areas had gaps when records weren’t kept. Some records were lost or destroyed. Some are still being digitized.

What can you do?

You can check the status of the digitization for your town by clicking “esplora gli archivi” (explore the archives) and clicking on your province.

Here it will say the status of digitization for the province. It also lists the physical documents that are held by the archive in Italy. And this page has the contact email.

You can write to the municipality to verify if a record exists. Or, if you know it exists, you can write to request the document. The contact information is also on this page.

Use the Italian letter writing guide in FamilySearch to write your letter.

You can also visit the archives in-person to get access to the physical archives.

Rome at night with view of the Vatican in the distance. Genealogy leads toplanning an Italian roots trip. — Rome at night. Photo by Taja Maycock

All Roads Lead To Rome

As someone trying to find your roots in Italy, knowing how to use Portale Antenati efficiently will help you go through hundreds of online registers quickly.

But at some point, you will realize not all documents are online and it is time to visit the archives in Italy.

Don’t wait too long. Start thinking about creating a memorable trip to Italy to find your ancestors.