Provincia di Torino
Before 1865, parishes carried civil status
Piedmont's records follow a rule that catches everyone working south to north: until civil status was introduced for all comuni of the Kingdom in 1865, registration in the Piedmontese state was the responsibility of the parishes. The state archive's only civil fond for the early period is Napoleonic, 1804-1813, and covers the Circondario di Torino alone. Everything else before 1865 is in a church.
Explore the comuni
Comuni in Provincia di Torino
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 Torino holds
The governing fact is a legal one: until civil status was introduced for all comuni of the Kingdom in 1865, acts in the Piedmontese state were the responsibility of the parishes.
The archive's early civil holding is therefore narrow: Napoleonic civil status, 1804-1813, for the comuni of the Circondario di Torino only. Outside those nine years and that circondario there is no state civil series for the period.
For 1814-1865 the record is the parish register, held by the parish or, often, centralised and microfilmed by the diocesan archive. For a Waldensian family the record is the Waldensian church's own register, and before 1848 those families appear in no Catholic book.
From 1866 the first original is with the comune and the second copy went to the tribunal.
What the state archive does hold in depth, and what is easy to overlook, are the Savoy state fonds: notarial acts, judicial records, land registers, military and court administration from a kingdom that governed itself for centuries. For the period when no civil register existed, a notarial act — a dowry, a sale, a testament — is frequently the document that proves a relationship.
The portal marks digitisation Completa for what is published, which given the narrow civil holding is a smaller claim than it sounds.
Continue your research
No civil series before 1865 outside nine Napoleonic years in one circondario. The parish is the record.
Archivio di Stato di Torino on Antenati
The archive's own statement of the parish rule and its Napoleonic holding.
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
Nine years of civil records, and a century of parish books
The archive holds Napoleonic civil status, 1804-1813, for the comuni of the Circondario di Torino only. Nine years, one circondario. That is the extent of early civil registration here.
Outside that window, and outside that circondario, the record before 1865 is the parish register — baptisms, marriages and burials kept under the authority of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which never introduced a Napoleonic-style civil system of its own and left the function with the church until the Italian code came into force.
This is the opposite of the southern pattern, where civil registration begins in 1809 and runs continuously. A researcher moving from Naples or Palermo to Turin should expect to change method entirely: diocesan archives, parish books, Latin entries, and no state civil series to fall back on.
From 1866 the comune's own ufficio di stato civile holds the first original and the tribunal the second copy.
For the intervening decades the notarial and judicial fonds at the state archive are often the most productive substitute, since land, dowry and inheritance acts name people and relationships.
The province
A kingdom's capital, and a province from 1859
The Province of Torino in the modern Italian system derives from the Rattazzi reform of 1859 — the administrative reorganisation that divided the Kingdom of Sardinia into provinces on the French model, two years before the Kingdom of Italy existed.
Turin's significance is that it was the capital of that kingdom and then, from 1861 to 1865, the first capital of Italy. The Savoy state's archives are correspondingly deep: this was a functioning European monarchy with a bureaucracy, an army and a diplomatic service, and its records reflect that.
The territory runs from the Alps on the French border — the Val di Susa, the Val Chisone, the Canavese valleys — down to the Po plain. The Waldensian valleys west of Pinerolo are a distinct case: a Protestant minority since the twelfth century, persecuted into the seventeenth, granted civil rights only in 1848. Waldensian families kept their own registers, and before 1848 their births and marriages were not recorded in Catholic parish books at all — which is the single most important thing to know for anyone tracing a Vaudois line.
Turin industrialised early and heavily. Fiat was founded in 1899, and from the 1950s the city drew hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Veneto and then from the south — Puglia, Calabria, Sicily. A Torinese family of 1970 is very often a southern family of 1955, and its records are in another province entirely.
Culture & traditions
Alpine valleys, the Waldensians and the factory city
The province holds three quite different populations.
The Alpine valleys — Susa, Chisone, Lanzo, the Canavese — are Occitan- and Franco-Provençal-speaking in parts, with a transhumant and emigrant tradition. Seasonal migration into France was ordinary for centuries; permanent emigration followed, and Piedmontese communities in France and Argentina are old.
The Waldensian valleys around Torre Pellice, Angrogna and Prali are the heart of Italy's oldest Protestant minority. Their own church records, their Tavola Valdese archives and the memory of the Glorious Return of 1689 structure family identity there. Emigration to Uruguay and Argentina from these valleys in the nineteenth century was organised and substantial, and Waldensian communities in South America still correspond with the home valleys.
The plain was rice and cattle country, with Chivasso and Carmagnola as market towns.
Turin itself moved from court city to factory city. Its nineteenth-century trades were textiles, printing and precision work; its twentieth was the motor industry. The migration waves left a demography where a great many Torinesi families have their deep records in Veneto, Puglia or Calabria.
Province established
1859
Comuni covered
312
Historic names
Regno di Sardegna · Ducato di Savoia · Circondario di Torino · Valli Valdesi · Canavese
Languages & dialects
Italian · Piemontese · Occitan in the western valleys · Franco-Provencal in the Val Soana and Lanzo
Traditions
the Waldensian Glorious Return of 1689 · Ivrea's Battle of the Oranges · Alpine transhumance and migration into France · Fiat and the factory city · Savoy court administration
The Province of Torino in the modern Italian provincial system derives from the Rattazzi reform of 1859. This is used as the institutional lineage marker rather than the much older city date.
Visit the province
Going about a Torino search
Adjust the method before you start. There is no long civil series here. Nine Napoleonic years for one circondario, then parish registers until 1865.
Go to the diocesan archive for anything between 1814 and 1865, and expect Latin.
If the family is Waldensian, go to the Waldensian church's own records and the Tavola Valdese archives — and remember that before 1848 they are not in Catholic registers at all.
Use the notarial fonds at the state archive as the substitute for a missing civil series; they name people and relationships and they are continuous.
If the family arrived in Turin after 1950, expect the deep record to be in the Veneto or the south.
What to see
The Waldensian valleys — Torre Pellice, Angrogna and Prali, Protestant since the twelfth century.
The Val di Susa — the Sacra di San Michele and the road to France.
The Canavese — Ivrea, its carnival, and the Olivetti company town.
Turin's court quarter — capital of Savoy and first capital of Italy.
The Po plain — Chivasso and Carmagnola, rice and cattle country.
Lingotto — the Fiat works whose rooftop test track defined industrial Turin.
Not yet in the collection
Want to see Provincia di Torino 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.