Provincia di Trento
Trento's civil fonds are in provincial custody
The State Archive at Trento holds very little civil status, because the civil-status fonds were entrusted to the Provincia di Trento for custody and maintenance — a consequence of the province's autonomy. What remains at the state archive is specific and old: the Giudizio Distrettuale di Condino, 1814-1867, with material running from 1708 to 1868, and Rovereto, Stato civile 1811-1814.
Your roots
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Comuni in Provincia di Trento
Civil registers were kept by the comune, not the province. If one of these is your family's, start there.
Where the records are
Where a Trento search actually goes
The civil-status fonds were entrusted to the Provincia di Trento for custody and maintenance. Under the province's autonomy, its archival heritage is administered provincially, so the Archivio provinciale di Trento rather than the state archive is the destination for most civil material.
At the State Archive the relevant holdings are two and they are specific.
Giudizio Distrettuale di Condino, 1814-1867, with material running from 1708 to 1868 — a district court fond from the Giudizio Valli, covering the Val del Chiese, and carrying more than a century and a half of judicial and registration material.
Rovereto, Stato civile, 1811-1814 — the Napoleonic interval, when the Kingdom of Italy briefly imposed civil registration before Austria returned.
For everything else before annexation, the parish is the record, under Austrian law. The Diocesan Archive of Trento holds and has largely microfilmed the parish registers of the diocese, and that is the practical first destination for any pre-twentieth-century search.
For Trentino men who served before 1918, the military records are Austro-Hungarian and sit in Austrian archives, chiefly the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna.
Digitisation on Antenati for this archive is marked Prevista — planned rather than complete.
Continue your research
Civil status is held by the Provincia di Trento, and before 1918 the parish register is the official record.
Archivio di Stato di Trento on Antenati
The archive's own statement of the provincial custody and its two remaining fonds.
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
Austrian law, provincial custody
Two facts govern this province and neither resembles the Italian norm.
First, the civil-status fonds were entrusted to the Provincia di Trento for custody and maintenance. Trentino's autonomy statute gives the province responsibility for its own archival heritage, so the material a researcher expects in a state archive is largely held by the Archivio provinciale di Trento instead. That is where a Trentino civil search goes.
Second, this was Austria until 1918. Under Austrian law the parish kept the official registers — Taufbuch, Trauungsbuch, Sterbebuch — and they are the civil record, not a supplement. Many run from the seventeenth century, some earlier, and they are generally well kept. Italian-style civil registration began only after annexation.
What the State Archive does hold is narrow and worth knowing precisely: the Giudizio Distrettuale di Condino, 1814-1867, with material from 1708 to 1868, and Rovereto, Stato civile, 1811-1814, from the brief Napoleonic interval.
Digitisation for this archive is marked Prevista — planned, not yet done.
The province
A prince-bishopric, Austria, and annexation in 1918
Trento was a prince-bishopric for eight centuries, a semi-independent ecclesiastical state within the Holy Roman Empire, and the seat of the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563 — the council that set the Catholic Church's own rules for parish registration, which is why the region's parish books are so often long and orderly.
Secularised in 1803, the territory passed to Austria, briefly to Bavaria and to Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy — which is when the short Rovereto civil series of 1811-1814 was produced — and then back to Austria in 1815, where it remained until the First World War.
That war was fought across it. The front ran through the Adamello, the Pasubio and the Lagarina valley from 1915 to 1918; villages were evacuated, and tens of thousands of Trentini were deported to camps in Bohemia and Moravia as profughi. Meanwhile Trentino men had been conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army and many fought on the Eastern Front. Those two facts shape twentieth-century family records profoundly: the military record of a Trentino man born before 1900 is an Austrian one, and a family may have a refugee file rather than a continuous parish entry for those years.
The Province of Trento was organised in the Italian system in the early 1920s, with Bolzano separated from it in 1927.
Culture & traditions
Valleys, Ladin, and a history under two empires
The province is a set of valleys radiating from the Adige, and the valley is the social unit.
The Val di Fiemme and Val di Fassa run north-east into the Dolomites; Fassa is Ladin-speaking, one of the Rhaeto-Romance valleys, with its own language, institutions and records. The Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme, a communal landholding body founded in the twelfth century, still administers forest in common and keeps its own archive — an unusual and genealogically useful institution.
The Val di Non and Val di Sole to the north-west are apple and mountain country with heavy emigration, and the Nones dialect is distinct.
The Vallagarina around Rovereto was the industrial and silk-producing part, and Rovereto's Venetian past shows in its architecture.
The Valsugana runs east toward the Veneto and was a route and a front line.
Emigration from these valleys was early and went far: to Brazil from the 1870s, where Trentino colonies in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina still speak a dialect their homeland has largely lost, and to the United States, particularly to the mining districts.
The Austrian century left habits that show in the record: careful registration, German administrative vocabulary, and a population comfortable in two bureaucratic languages.
Province established
1923
Comuni covered
166
Historic names
Principato vescovile di Trento · Tirol · Welschtirol · Giudizio Distrettuale di Condino · Provincia di Trento before the 1927 division
Languages & dialects
Italian · Trentino dialects · Ladin in Val di Fassa · Cimbrian and Mocheno in isolated pockets · German administrative usage to 1918
Traditions
the Council of Trent and parish registration · the Magnifica Comunita di Fiemme · Ladin language in Fassa · emigration to Rio Grande do Sul · the Austro-Hungarian war service
The Province of Trento was established in the Italian provincial system after annexation of Trentino-Alto Adige, with the province formally organized in the early 1920s. 1923 is used as the institutional province marker.
Visit the province
Going about a Trento search
Go to the Archivio provinciale di Trento for civil status, not to the state archive. The custody arrangement is the first thing to understand and it redirects most enquiries.
For anything before 1918, go to the Diocesan Archive and the parish. Austrian law made the parish register the official record, and the diocese has centralised and filmed much of it.
If the man served in the First World War and was born before about 1900, his military record is Austro-Hungarian and the search moves to Vienna.
If the family was evacuated or deported between 1915 and 1918, look for profughi documentation; it often survives where continuous parish entries do not.
For the Val del Chiese, the Condino fond at the state archive reaches back to 1708.
What to see
Val di Fassa — Ladin-speaking, with its own institutions and records.
The Magnifica Comunita di Fiemme — communal forest ownership since the twelfth century.
Rovereto — the Vallagarina town, its silk past and the Campana dei Caduti.
The Adamello and Pasubio — the high front lines of 1915-18.
Val di Non — apple country, castles, and heavy emigration to Brazil.
Trento — the prince-bishops' castle and the council of 1545-63.
Not yet in the collection
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