Provincia di Bologna
The Reno department precedes modern Bologna
Bologna's oldest civil registration is Napoleonic and departmental, not provincial: the Stato civile del Dipartimento del Reno, 1806-1815, with precedents from 1805 for the cantone di Budrio. It is the copy with allegati deposited annually with the Cancelleria della Corte di giustizia. Then a long gap, and a second holding: the Comune di Bologna birth, citizenship, marriage and death registers for 1866-1899, the tribunal copy.
Your roots
Not sure which comune? Ask OrsoExplore the comuni
Comuni in Provincia di Bologna
Civil registers were kept by the comune, not the province. If one of these is your family's, start there.
Where the records are
What Archivio di Stato di Bologna holds
Two civil-status holdings, both specific, with a papal interval between them.
The Stato civile del Dipartimento del Reno, 1806-1815, with precedents in 1805 for the cantone di Budrio, is the Napoleonic registration for the department. It is the copy with allegati deposited annually with the Cancelleria della Corte di giustizia, which is why it survives as a single ordered series rather than scattered among comuni. The allegati are the valuable part: marriage files with supporting certificates.
The Comune di Bologna fond holds birth, citizenship, marriage and death registers for 1866-1899 — the tribunal copy. This is the city only.
For the years between, 1815 to 1866, papal administration returned registration to the parish. The archive's civil fonds do not cover that period and the diocesan and parish archives are where the work has to be done.
For comuni of the province after 1866, the first original is with the comune's own ufficio di stato civile.
Both surviving fonds are fully digitised on the portal.
One orientation point worth carrying: the Napoleonic unit is the Dipartimento del Reno, whose boundaries differ from the modern province, so a comune's presence or absence in that fond is not predicted by today's map.
Continue your research
Napoleonic registration is departmental, not provincial. The papal years 1815-1866 are in the parish.
Archivio di Stato di Bologna on Antenati
The archive's own statement of its Napoleonic and post-unification holdings.
antenati.cultura.gov.itPortale Antenati archive directory
Every participating State Archive and what each says it holds.
antenati.cultura.gov.itAn archive record and an online family tree will often disagree. Why family trees disagree, and what settles it →
Your roots
Two holdings, and a papal gap between them
The archive's civil material comes in two separated blocks, and what lies between them is the papal Restoration.
The first is the Dipartimento del Reno, 1806-1815 — French-style civil registration across the Napoleonic department, with allegati, deposited each year with the Cancelleria della Corte di giustizia. There are precedents from 1805 for the cantone di Budrio. The unit here is the department, not the province, and its boundaries are not modern ones.
The second is the Comune di Bologna, 1866-1899 — birth, citizenship, marriage and death, the copy sent to the tribunal. Note that this is the city, not the province.
Between 1815 and 1866 lies papal rule, under which the parish did the registering. For those fifty-one years the archive's civil fonds will not answer, and the diocesan and parish archives are the route.
So: Napoleonic decade at the state archive, papal half-century in the parish, post-unification city at the state archive again — and the provincial comuni after 1866 with their own offices.
The province
A papal city that governed itself, and a department named for a river
The Province of Bologna was instituted in 1859 by decree of Luigi Carlo Farini, in preparation for Emilia's annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia. Before that Bologna had been the second city of the Papal States for three centuries, governed under a peculiar arrangement in which a papal legate shared authority with the city's own senate — a degree of self-government no other papal city retained.
The Napoleonic interruption created the record that survives best from the early period. Bologna became the capital of the Dipartimento del Reno, named for the river, in the Cisalpine and then Italic republics, and French civil registration came with it from 1806. When papal rule returned in 1815 the system was dismantled and the parish resumed.
The city's university, founded in 1088 and the oldest in the Western world, gave it a floating population of students from across Europe for eight centuries — a fact that occasionally explains a foreign name in an otherwise local parish register.
The province is the Via Emilia corridor with the Apennines rising south and the plain running north to the Reno and the Po. The mountain comuni — Porretta, Vergato, Lizzano — look toward Tuscany and had their own transhumance; the plain comuni — Budrio, Medicina, Molinella — were reclaimed wetland worked by braccianti, whose organising in the late nineteenth century made this province a founding ground of Italian socialism and of the agricultural cooperatives.
Culture & traditions
The plain, the mountains and the Via Emilia
The province divides along the Via Emilia, and the two halves had different economies and different politics.
The plain to the north — Budrio, Medicina, Molinella, Malalbergo — was marsh and rice ground drained over centuries. Its workforce were braccianti, day labourers on large holdings, and their unionisation from the 1880s produced strikes, the first agricultural cooperatives, and a political culture that shaped the province for a century. Molinella's labour struggles were nationally known.
The mountains to the south — Porretta Terme, Vergato, Lizzano in Belvedere, Castiglione dei Pepoli — were chestnut and pasture country, poor, with seasonal migration toward Tuscany and later permanent emigration.
The hill belt between them, around Imola, Castel San Pietro and Bazzano, is the fruit and vine country of the province.
Bologna itself had its own trades: silk, worked on water-powered throwing machines from the fifteenth century, and later printing, packaging and mechanics. Its portici run for nearly forty kilometres.
The Apennine passes — the Futa and the Porretta line — carried traffic to Tuscany, and the Gothic Line ran across them in 1944-45, with heavy destruction in the mountain comuni. The massacre at Monte Sole in the autumn of 1944 is the worst single atrocity against civilians in western Europe during the war, and it emptied several small comuni permanently.
Province established
1859
Comuni covered
55
Historic names
Stato Pontificio · Legazione di Bologna · Dipartimento del Reno · Provincia del Reno · Via Emilia corridor
Languages & dialects
Italian · Bolognese (Emilian) · Apennine varieties toward Tuscany · plain dialects of the Reno
Traditions
the portici and the university · silk throwing from the fifteenth century · braccianti unions and cooperatives · Apennine chestnut economy · Monte Sole and the Gothic Line
The Province of Bologna was instituted in 1859 by decree of Luigi Carlo Farini in preparation for Emilia's annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia.
Visit the province
Going to the archive in Bologna
Place the event in one of three periods and the destination follows.
1806-1815: the archive, Dipartimento del Reno, and ask for the allegati.
1815-1866: the parish or the diocesan archive. The state archive's civil fonds do not cover the papal decades.
1866-1899, city of Bologna: the archive again, the tribunal copy.
1866 onward, provincial comuni: the comune's own office.
For a Budrio family, note the 1805 precedents — a year earlier than the rest of the department. Say which period you want when you write ahead.
What to see
The portici — nearly forty kilometres of arcades through the city.
The university quarter — the oldest university in the Western world, founded 1088.
Monte Sole — the site of the 1944 massacre, now a historical park.
The plain comuni — Budrio, Medicina and Molinella, reclaimed marsh and braccianti country.
The Apennine passes — the Futa and Porretta routes to Tuscany, and the Gothic Line.
Imola and the hill belt — fruit, vine and the eastern edge of the province.
Not yet in the collection
Want to see Provincia di Bologna represented?
Requests are how we decide what comes next — every one is read, and the places people ask for are the places that get made.