Provincia di Roma
The deposited Roman civil registers burned in 2011
This is the hardest fact in the collection. The Stato Civile di Roma e Provincia, 1871-1929 — the Italian civil registers for Rome and every comune of the province — was deposited by the Tribunal in 2006-2007, outsourced to a commercial store at Aprilia for lack of space, and destroyed by fire there in 2011. Not damaged. Destroyed. What exists instead are the first originals still held by the comuni, which FamilySearch began digitising in 2015.
Explore the comuni
Comuni in Provincia di Roma
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 Roma holds, and what it lost
Two civil-status fonds, and one of them no longer exists.
Atti dello Stato Civile Napoleonico, 1810-1814: civil status acts of Rome and its circondario, with a small appendix of parish books, 1565-1849, that reached the archive with the rest of the fond. For the French years this is the only civil series, and the attached parish material reaches back two and a half centuries further.
Stato Civile di Roma e Provincia, 1871-1929: deposited by the Tribunal of Rome in tranches in 2006-2007 — the Italian civil status registers of birth, death and marriage, with indexes, for Rome and the comuni of the province. For lack of space the archive outsourced this documentation to Iron Mountain, stored at a depot at Aprilia, where in 2011 a fire destroyed all the registers.
To make good the loss, FamilySearch began a campaign in 2015 to digitise the first originals still held by the comuni of the province. That campaign is now the practical substitute, and for most researchers it is where the 1871-1929 record will be found.
Levy records are unaffected and substantial. The Ufficio di Leva di Roma, 1850-1947, holds levy lists, extraction lists and the decisions of the Consiglio di Leva. The Ufficio di Leva del Circondario di Civitavecchia covers the coastal district from 1850.
What survives is partly digitised. For the destroyed period the archive cannot help however the question is asked, and saying so plainly saves a wasted correspondence.
Continue your research
The 1871-1929 second copies were destroyed by fire in 2011. Use the comuni's first originals instead.
Archivio di Stato di Roma on Antenati
The archive's own account of its fonds and of the Aprilia fire.
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
Go to the comune, not to the archive
For the period 1871-1929 the normal order of research is inverted here. The archive's second copies no longer exist, so the comune's own first original is not a fallback — it is the record.
That is why the FamilySearch digitisation campaign matters so much. Begun in 2015 specifically to make good the loss, it filmed the first originals held by the comuni of the province. For a great many Roman families it is now the principal route to a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century act.
What the archive does still hold for the earlier period is significant and often overlooked: the Atti dello Stato Civile Napoleonico, 1810-1814, covering Rome and its circondario, with a small appendix of parish books running 1565-1849 that came in with the fond. Four years of French civil registration, and three centuries of parish material attached to it.
So: 1810-1814 at the archive, 1871-1929 at the comune or on FamilySearch, and the papal decades between them in the parish.
The province
Papal Rome, 1870, and a province of one enormous city
The unified Province of Rome was established by royal decree on 15 October 1870, after Rome's annexation to Italy on 20 September of that year. Before that date the city and the Agro Romano were the capital of the Papal States, and civil registration in the Italian sense did not exist — the parish was the register.
The Napoleonic interlude is the exception, and it is why the archive's earliest civil fond runs 1810-1814: Rome was annexed to the French Empire in 1809, made the second city of the Empire, and given French-style civil status. When papal rule returned in 1814 the system lapsed.
After 1870 Rome grew faster than almost any European capital. Whole quarters were built in a decade; the population quadrupled between unification and the Second World War, drawn from the Agro, from Abruzzo, the Marche and the south. A Roman family of the 1920s is very often a provincial family of the 1880s, and the civil record that would prove it is precisely what burned.
The province was also cut down twice. Rieti and Viterbo were created in 1927, and Latina and Frosinone in the same period, taking territory that had been Roman. A comune now in one of those provinces may have its earlier records catalogued under Rome.
Culture & traditions
The city, the Castelli and the Agro
The province is dominated by the city to a degree no other in Italy matches, but it is not only the city.
The Castelli Romani — Frascati, Marino, Genzano, Albano, Velletri — are the volcanic hills south-east of Rome, wine country since antiquity and the summer resort of the papal aristocracy. Their comuni have continuous parish records and a strong local identity; Genzano's infiorata and Marino's wine festival are among the oldest documented in the region.
The Agro Romano around the city was latifundia and malaria until the twentieth century — vast estates grazed by transhumant flocks from Abruzzo, worked seasonally by men who came down the tratturi and went home again.
Tivoli and the Aniene valley to the east, with Subiaco above it, are old and separate: Subiaco holds the first Benedictine monasteries and the first printing press in Italy, set up in 1465.
Civitavecchia on the coast was the papal port, and its population includes maritime trades found nowhere else in the province.
And Rome itself absorbed everyone. The Trastevere and Monti rioni have deep native families; the quarters built after 1870 — Prati, San Lorenzo, Testaccio — were filled by incomers, and Testaccio in particular by workers from the Marche and Abruzzo whose grandchildren are Roman.
Province established
1870
Comuni covered
121
Historic names
Stato Pontificio · Comarca di Roma · Agro Romano · Circondario di Civitavecchia · Provincia di Roma before the 1927 divisions
Languages & dialects
Italian · Romanesco · Castelli varieties · Marchigian and Abruzzese survivals in the post-1870 quarters
Traditions
the Castelli wine festivals and Genzano's infiorata · transhumance into the Agro · Subiaco's monasteries and first press · Civitavecchia's papal port · the quarters built after 1870
The Città Metropolitana's institutional history states that the unified Province of Rome was established by royal decree on 15 October 1870 after Rome's annexation to Italy.
Visit the province
Going to the archive in Roma
Decide the period first, because it decides the building.
1810-1814: the archive, and ask about the parish appendix while you are there.
1815-1870: the parish, since papal Rome had no civil registration in the Italian form.
1871-1929: not the archive. The second copies burned in 2011. Go to the comune, or to the FamilySearch films of the comuni's first originals.
Military: the archive, throughout — the levy holdings from 1850 are intact and are often the only surviving official record of a Roman man from the destroyed decades.
If the comune is now in Rieti, Viterbo, Latina or Frosinone but was Roman before 1927, check here for the earlier material.
What to see
The Castelli Romani — Frascati, Marino, Genzano and Albano in the volcanic hills.
Tivoli and the Aniene — the villas, and Subiaco above with the first Benedictine houses.
Civitavecchia — the papal port, and its maritime trades.
The Agro Romano — latifundia and transhumance country until the twentieth century.
Testaccio and San Lorenzo — quarters built after 1870 and filled by incomers.
Trastevere and Monti — the rioni with the deepest native Roman families.
Not yet in the collection
Want to see Provincia di Roma represented?
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