Italy

Ancesstors Portal - Italian databases and information, civil registries and name databases

Antenati (Italian for “ancestors”) is, by far, the best website for Italian research. Its records are clearly organized, from province to civil registration period to town to type of record and year. It is in Italian with an English-language option, which is not updated as regularly as the Italian.

FamilySearch is a close runner-up to Antenati for Italian research online 

Most websites of Italian provincial archives (archivio di stato singular; archivi di stato plural) do not contain genealogical indexes. Instead, their sites inventory what stato civile records and other documents they have in their care: military records, notarial records, catasti (akin to a tax or census record) and more.  The following are most useful

Archivio di Stato di Salerno, Lista di Leva (Conscription Lists):  

Archivio di Stato di Alessandria, Ruoli Matricolari (Matriculation Rolls): 

Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Passaporti ed Emigrazione (Passports and Emigration): 

Ancestry.com’s coverage of Italian records is sparser than others’ on this list, it does contain some records of Italian towns or provinces that aren’t found elsewhere. 

Italian Names indicates the distribution of specific surnames in Italy, helping you learn more about where your ancestor might have come from. 

Transcribed Vital Records of Italian Towns has collected links to websites where Italian records have been transcribed for various towns.  

Italian Parish Records gathers together links to other websites where Italian records have been transcribed, as well as links to digitized images and (as the name implies) parish records. While it currently seems to be Sicily-focused, the site includes records from every region in Italy. This website is grassroots efforts at its very finest. 

Calabria Exchange has extractions from genealogically relevant records in a bunch of towns from Calabria, but also valuable links to other sites where records have been transcribed or family pages for people researching there.