How to Hire a Genealogist in Italy: Where to Look, What It Costs, How Long It Takes

No. In Italy, as in the United States, genealogy is not a regulated profession. There is no state exam and no license. Anyone can call themselves a genealogist.

Since 2013, an Italian law (Law 4/2013) has allowed professions without a professional order to form their own associations. Genealogists have one: PROGENITA, short for Professionisti Genealogisti Italia. Its members follow a code of ethics and do training every year. Members can also apply for a yearly quality certificate, which the association gives after a review of their work. The association publishes a list of its members, so you can check a name.

Membership is voluntary. It is a good sign, but it is not a license.

Other signs you may see:

• Membership in the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). Members accept a code of ethics. Their skills are not tested.
• ICAPGen accreditation. An Accredited Genealogist has passed written and oral exams for one region, and Italy is one of the regions.
• An Italian diploma in archival studies and paleography. The schools that give it are attached to state archives. The diploma shows that the person can read old documents.

Our guide on how to choose a Jewish genealogist explains what each of these really proves.

Directories. The APG directory lists its members with their research specialties, and some of them are based in Italy. ICAPGen has a directory of its Accredited Genealogists, with Italy as one of its regions. PROGENITA publishes its list of members.

People who have done it. Ask in genealogy groups and at your local Jewish Genealogical Society. A name that comes with a real report behind it is worth more than a good website.

Freelance marketplaces. They can work for one simple job, like a single record from a known town and year. For a family project, you need more than a profile and stars.

For Jewish families. Many Italian genealogists know Catholic parish records very well. Jewish records are often kept somewhere else: in the archives of the Jewish communities, which have their own rules and open by appointment. Ask the researcher a direct question: have you worked in Jewish community archives before, and which ones?

Before you hire anyone, it helps to know where the records are. It decides who you need, what you will pay and how long you will wait.


Civil records start in the early 1800s in some regions and in the 1860s or 1870s in others. Before that, families appear mostly in church records. Jewish families appear in the records of their own community. Families who converted can appear in both.
What is online is only part of the story. Our guide to Italian Jewish records online and in the archives shows where online sources end.

Here are the market prices in 2026. For the full picture, see our guide to what genealogy research costs.

• One document from a known place and date: about $150 to $250.
• A preliminary assessment: from a few hundred dollars to about $1,000.
• An independent genealogist by the hour: about $50 to $200, usually $75 to $150. A typical project takes 20 to 40 hours.
• Serious archival research: about $3,000 to $15,000, depending on the family.

Costs that come on top. Ask who pays for them:

• Town hall fees. Some town halls charge for historical searches. One town hall in Piedmont, for example, charges €250 to €300 for each record. If it finds nothing, the fee is not returned.
• Archive copies. In many state archives you can photograph documents with your own camera for free, for study. Official copies and scans cost extra.
• Travel between towns and archives.
• Translation of old documents from Italian, Latin or Hebrew.

These are the usual waits in Italy:

• One record from a town hall: often weeks, sometimes months. The same town hall in Piedmont promises an answer in 60 days, and 180 days for citizenship requests from foreign citizens. Some town halls never answer.
• A preliminary assessment: about a month.
• A full project with work in the archives: usually three to six months.

• Reading room hours. One state archive reading room in Emilia-Romagna, for example, is open three days a week, mostly in the morning. You can order up to seven items a day.
• Appointments. Parish archives and Jewish community archives often have one person, or none, to open the door.
• August. Many offices in Italy slow down or close for part of the month.
• Lost records. Some registers were destroyed in the war years of 1943 to 1945. In Florence, the 1966 flood damaged the Jewish community's archive.
• Unindexed registers. Most old registers have no name index. Someone has to read them page by page.

An honest genealogist gives you a range and tells you what decides it. Be careful with anyone who promises a date and a result together.

Before you pay, ask for a short written agreement. It should answer these points:

1. The question. Which ancestor, which family line, which towns.
2. The scope. A fixed number of hours, or a fixed task. Which archives will be visited.
3. Extra costs. Who pays for town hall fees, copies, travel and translation.
4. What you receive. Copies of every record found, translations, and a report that names its sources.
5. Updates. How often you will hear from the researcher.
6. If nothing is found. What you pay, and what you receive in that case.
7. Who does the work. The name of the person who will sit in the reading room.

Send everything you already have before the work starts, so you do not pay to find it again. Our checklist of what to bring to a genealogist helps you gather it.

Can I do the research myself from home? Often you can start. Antenati and other online sources cover many civil records. You need someone in Italy when the records are not online, when a town hall does not answer, or when the records sit in a Jewish community archive.

Do Italian genealogists work in English? Many do. Ask for the report in English and for translations of the key records.

Can a genealogist help me get Italian citizenship? A genealogist can find documents. A genealogist is not a lawyer, and the rules for citizenship by descent changed in 2025. Read our guide to Italian citizenship and Jewish ancestry.

Is a surname enough to start? It is a starting point, not proof. A good researcher will treat it as a direction to check. See our guide to Italian Jewish surnames.

What if my family's Jewish connection is uncertain? This is common. Some families converted. Their records can sit in Jewish and in Catholic archives. A careful researcher looks in both.

We work with Jewish families whose roots are in Italy, or whose family lived in Italy for a time on the way to somewhere else. Our archivists work in Florence and Venice, and we have working agreements with the Jewish communities of Rome, Florence and Venice.

We start every family with La Ricerca, a preliminary archival assessment. An archivist checks what records survive for one family line, one surname and its town. Then you receive a written assessment: what exists, where it is, and whether a full search is worth starting. Sometimes the honest answer is no, and we say so.

La Ricerca takes about a month and costs $950. If you continue with our full archival search within 90 days, the full $950 is credited toward it.