I am more than happy to share this beautifully written post by Justine Forelli, creator of the blog
http://www.ciaoitalianista.com
and Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/italianrootstravel/
No need to add a single word about the subject: she explained everything perfectly!
Enjoy the read of this article and also her other amazing posts about genealogy and Italy!
Many Italian surnames coincide with a place name – a nation, a region, city, town, village or hamlet – and the reasons may be different, sometimes even surprising.
In this post I will try to answer your questions about it, for example:
Disclaimer: this is not the result of a specific study, it’s only the consequence of my experience “on the field” and so, my approach will be very practical.
If you are from America, Canada or Australia, you are very used to surnames which are also place names, as there are many examples in your Countries, such as Washington, Vancouver and Sydney.
In these three cases, and in most cases in your Countries, a new city was named after a famous person, as a tribute.
This is situation is very rare in Italy and the reason is simple: most cities and towns, villages and rivers, mountains and gulfs were named long before people started to have surnames!
Let’s make it quick and simple: surnames started to be used in the late Middle Age, but they were officialized only at the end of the century 1500, adopting as surname the nickname a person was known with, which could be his job, the name of his father, a physical characteristic, his place of origin or something else (there may be many examples).
Here are the categories that I identified, referring to surnames which are also place names.
The majority of people whose surname is also a place name, may be native of that place.
However, this means that they were living in that place before the introduction of surnames, many centuries ago!
For example, if in the Middle Age a family was moving from Monza to another place (let’s say Milan), they were identified as “those from Monza”, and when surnames were formally introduced, it is possible that they adopted the surname Monza, because this is how they were known in Milan.
This means that you will never find traces of your Monza family in Monza, because they were called Monza only after leaving this city and settling in another one.
Besides this, the adoption of the surname Monza may have happened before the introduction of parish records, and it may be very difficult or even impossible to get to the origins of it.
The above example is a good one, actually.
There are, in Italy, 495 families with surname Monza
Guess how many are living in Monza? No one!
Of course, because Monza was the surname which was given to people whose distinguishing characteristic was that they were coming from Monza, but there was no reason for a person living in Monza to get the nickname or surname Monza, as it was not a distinguishing mark.
(Source: https://www.cognomix.it/mappe-dei-cognomi-italiani/MONZA, accessed January 25th, 2025)
This is true also for surnames which are adjectives instead of nouns, such as Lombardi, Siciliano, Napolitano, Spagnoli (from Lombardy, Sicily, Naples or Spain respectively).
If your ancestor’s surname is GALLO or GALLI, you are in the same group, too!
Gallo has two translations: one is rooster, which is not the meaning of the surname, the other one is Gaul, thus French: your ancestors were then French people who settled in Italy some time in the distant past.
So, if your surname is Roma, I am sorry if you are disappointed to discover that the city was not called after you family!
On the other hand, if your ancestors were coming from a small hamlet, the place may actually have been called after them!
Imagine a small rural Italian town, a few centuries ago. Outside the town center, scattered in the countryside, are a handful of poor farmhouses, inhabited by families of farmers.
How do you call those places? Of course, like the people who are living there!
How can you recognize if the place took its name from the family, or if it’s the family who was named after the place because it was their place of origin?
Here is a very practical way (not 100% sure, but almost): check if there are still families living in that place, with that surname!
Here is an example: Cimelli is a surname and also the name of the hamlet of a town in Emilia Romagna. There were – and still are – families with the surname Cimelli living in Cimelli, so their surname cannot be a distinguishing mark, it did not suggest that they were “coming from Cimelli”.
For this reason, it is very likely that the place was named after the people who were living there.
Another example is even clearer: it’s another minuscule hamlet of a tiny town in Piedmont, and its name is Delaurenti, which means “(son) of Lorenzo”.
It is obviously a surname, a patronymic, not a place name. It was called after the family who was living there, whose surname was Delaurenti.
So, a person named after a place, to indicate the origin, or a place named after a person to indicate the residence… No tributes like for Washington?
Most places in Italy had already their names when people did not have surnames yet, so how could they be re-named to honor a famous person?
In a few cases they did, adding their important citizen’s surname to the town’s name. Here are a few examples:
In these cases, if your family surname matches with that of the tributed person, your ancestors may actually be native of that town, and possibly also related with the famous person!
What about Rosa Teodosionopoli from Pellegrino Parmense?
Teodosionopoli (Teodosiopoli, actually) is the ancient name of a city in Anatolia, Turkey, whose modern name is Erzurum.
Which amazing family history is hidden behind the surname of this person?
Were her ancestors actually born in the exotic city of Teodosiopoli?
Of course not. No historical circumstance would ever explain why a migrant from Teodosiopoli ended up in Pellegrino Parmense, in Emilia Romagna, but even if it would, the migrant would have been probably nicknamed Turco: Turkish.
No wonderful family history for Rosa, unfortunately: she was a foundling, and this is the explanation of her surname.
When foundlings were abandoned at a hospital, they were given a random name and surname. In many cases, the inspiration for the surname was coming from a dictionary or encyclopedia, and toponyms were often used.
How to spot if a surname indicates the real origin of the family or if it’s an invented surname?
One way could be to analyze how far are the two places: the birth place and the place name used as surname.
If the origin of the family was from a very small village in Calabria who migrated to a distant region, the nickname would have probably been Calabrese, which was enough to identify the family.
If the surname points at a small town which is very far from the birthplace, it is probably not related to the place of origin.
If the surname is an exotic place name such as Acapulco, it is surely the surname of a foundling.
If the surname is not very spread out in the area, and it looks like your family is the only one family with that surname, it is probably so, and your ancestor was a foundling.
I hope you found this post useful to the discovery of your family history!
Feel free to send comments or questions!
(not the usual tragic story about a WWI soldier… another kind of tragic story)
Giacomo P. was born in a small town in the mountains in North Italy, in 1879, and by the time he was 37, in the year 1916, he was still unmarried.
He probably had a fiancée, though: Tersilla.
In 1916 Italy was fighting in the First World War: boys were leaving their girlfriends at home, promising to marry them at the end of the war, and knowing that many of them would not come back to fulfill their promise.
Giacomo, instead, married Tersilla long before the end of the war, when he was still a soldier, probably taking advantage of a permit.
They married in March 1916 and the reason for this urgency is easy to understand: Tersilla was pregnant!
Their baby, Antonio, was born less than 4 months later and a note at the bottom of his birth record confirms that his father was absent, under arms.
Giacomo probably saw his son for the first time months later, and could only enjoy the event of his birth through the many letters that soldiers were exchanging with their families.
He surely came home around September 1917, because Tersilla was pregnant again and delivered another son, Giovanni, in June 1918.
Giacomo was declared absent because he was “called again to the arms”, so probably he had enjoyed a long permit or was exempted from service for some reason.
However, in 1918 Italy was struggling because of the war: the number of casualties and wounded soldiers was enormous and there were no more “spare boys” to call to fight, so no justification was strong enough to be exempted from fighting.
Giacomo left therefore his pregnant wife home alone and probably received the news about Giovanni’s birth by letter, again.
He surely prayed to be able to come back home and hug his newborn child soon, but he probably never did it: they all died in 1918. The two babies and Tersilla.
The causes of their deaths are not reported in the records but they may have died of Spanish flu: another tremendous adversity that hit Italy just in 1918.
When Giacomo came back home from war, after having escaped God knows how many risks, his family was destroyed, his house was empty.
He had had a wife for two years, but he probably stayed with her only for a very short time.
He had a son, but he likely saw him only once or twice.
And he had a last son, who he probably never met.
He was the one who had been most at risk of death, and he was the only one to survive.
This was the end of his first life, but he will start a second one.
In 1921, Giacomo married again, to Marianna. His new wife was a very old spinster: she was 42! And she was… Tersilla’s oldest sister!
Despite her age, at the wedding Marianna was 8 months pregnant, too!
Giacomo and Marianna had a son and a daughter. And life went on.
GOOD TO KNOW
In Italy, today, the religious marriage and the civil marriage are joined in one: at the end of the religious ceremony the priest includes the civil formulas and takes care that the civil records are duly complied and signed. In the past they were two different events, which may be held even days or months apart.
In the cases of Tersilla and Marianna I “gossiped” about them being pregnant without being married, but this may not be true: perhaps they had celebrated the religious marriage before being pregnant, and they celebrated the civil marriage months later.
The info for this story was taken from civil records only
As I was explaining in a previous post, I had the fortunate chance to be involved in the creation of a documentary about emigration, thanks to the documentary maker Joseph Péaquin.
(If you missed it, read my previous post: A documentary about emigration from Valle d’Aosta to South Africa)
This video narrates 3 stories of emigrants from the Italian mountain region Valle d’Aosta to South Africa.
I appear in the initial part, introducing the first story, that of my customer Ariane and her ancestor Pierre Fromage.
The premiere was held on March 14th in Aosta, at a cinema hall with about 250 people, which was quite embarassing for me, as I am a shy person.
Anyway, forget about me and enjoy the three stories narrated in this excellent documentary!
The documentary is subtitled in English and there are English-spoken parts, too.
The first story is that of Ariane’s great grandfather, who left Italy at the beginning of the 20th century and emigrated to South Africa: a very uncommon destination for Italian emigration!
Valle d’Aosta is a small, mountain region situated in North-West Italy, at the border with France and Switzerland, and the main language spoken in the region is French.
Today, it is a destination for mountain sports lovers, as Italy’s top peaks are in this area, but along with new business, the production of traditional products is still one of the main activities: the cheese, lard and wine from Valle d’Aosta are Italian excellences!
As you will see in the video, one of the emigrants from Valle d’Aosta exported the cultivation of wine grapes to South Africa.
This post will hopefully reply to some of your questions about Italian passports, and if it won’t I hope it will be an interesting read, at least.
In the next chapters I will share with you everything I discovered about these important documents during my research at the Genova State Archive: I will tell you how they looked like, how they were obtained, which info were reported and also if a passport research is possible.
Let’s start discovering them!
The Italian Nation was born on the 17th of March 1861, which is the date when the new Kingdom of Italy was proclamed, following the unification of the country as a consequence of our Independence Wars.
Before that date, the Italian peninsula was politically split in many different States.
The map above shows the different States just before their unification into the Kingdom of Italy.
Just to make it simple, here is an approximate conversion table.
| Present region/province | Ancient State |
| Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Liguria, Sardinia, part of south/west Lombardy, part of southern France along the coast, French region Savoy | Kingdom of Sardinia |
| Lombardy, Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia | Lombardian-Venetian Kingdom governed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire |
| Provinces of Parma and Piacenza (present Emilia Romagna) | Duchy of Parma |
| Province of Modena (present Emilia Romagna) | Duchy of Modena |
| Province of Bologna, region Romagna, Marche, Umbria, Lazio | Papal States |
| Province of Lucca (present Tuscany) | Duchy of Lucca |
| Rest of Tuscany | Granduchy of Tuscany |
| All the remaining territory in Central and South Italy | Kingdom of the Two Sicilies |
Veneto and Friuli merged with the Italian Kingdom later (1866-1870), and there were mini-states that I did not mention, but it is not the scope of this article to get into these details. If you wish, you can check this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_states_of_Italy
What I wanted to highlight is that if your ancestor emigrated before 1861, he did not have an Italian passport!
His passport was emitted by one of the States listed above.
The other important detail to remark is that before 1861, people needed a passport to travel to the other States. Persons travelling from Milan to Genova needed a passport, as well as from Tuscany to Rome, or from Bologna to Naples.
Forget the modern booklets with a hard cover and multiple pages, here is how a 19th century passport looked like
It was a single big sheet (bigger than a Letter format) and it was supposed to be folded the size of a pocket.
I also found an example that still carried part of a cover and the ribbon that was closing it
The passport carried, on its top third, a grandiloquent crest and introduction.
In this example, the writing in big letters declares “in the name of His Majesty the King of Sardinia”: it was 1858 and Italy was not yet unified.
The central part reported the name of the passport holder and the destination.
In the example above: Sir Falletto from Villafalletti, who was going to travel to Switzerland, Germany, Lombardian-Venetian Kingdom and France.
Here below another example where the passport was extended to the entire family: “Carlo Gerardo son of the late Marcello with his wife Marina aged 28 and their children Lorenzo aged 8”.
They were travelling to Austria, Italian States, France, Switzerland and England.
The bottom part reported the place and date of the passport emission and the documents that were provided to obtain a passport.
More about the required documents in the next chapter.
The left part is dedicated to the “photo” of the title holder. Of course, photos were not in use in 1858 and so, this margin is for the physical description.
The details which are reported are: age, height, hair color, eyebrows, eyes, forehead, nose, mouth, beard, face shape, skin tan, distinguishing marks.
The word “Condizione” meant profession: in this example, the title holder was a merchant, which makes the request for a passport plausible.
At last: birth place and domicile.
The passport was issued by the Questura, the central police station, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Usually, it was necessary to show a “Nulla Osta” (no impediment), which was issued by the local Assessor to the Public Safety (Assessore di Pubblica Sicurezza). In this document, the Assessor declared that he was not aware of any obstacle that would prevent the applicant to obtain a passport.
For men, a note was added about their military status, whether they had served in the army. This was, of course, to avoid draft evaders to flee abroad.
In Genova, I had the chance to browse throught a few hundreds documents to request passports and I realized that, despite being the Nulla Osta the standard certificate needed for this request, in many cases alternative documents were provided: for clergy people, a reference letter from their superior was the rule; in one case, a woman obtained a passport by showing a heartfelt invitation letter from her husband to join him in America; foreign people who had been living in Genova for a while obtained a passport by giving back their expired, foreign passport (or at least, this is how I understood it).
In the first example, Sir Falletto from Villafalletti was eventually a privileged: he did not provide any document or Nulla Osta and he obtained the wished passport because he was “personally known”.
The logic behind 19th century passports was different from today’s. In a way, they were more similar to a visa because they listed the places where the holder had in plan to travel, and also because they had a very short validity: 1 year.
Theoretically, the owner of a passport had to give it back to the Questura at his return from the travel mentioned in the passport.
Of course, this was not always done, especially if the passport was used to emigrate steadily and never come back.
The answer is in the few lines above: people who emigrated and did not come back to Italy, did not return their passport to the Italian Questura.
And also, as I said above: the passport was a single sheet of paper.
No copies, no duplicates.
If your ancestors emigrated overseas, the most probable place where the only one example of their passports can be is a drawer in an old relative’s house… if it’s still existing!
There are no copies in Italy, unfortunately.
So, what did I search, in Genova, exactly?
The Genova State Archive stores a collection called “Matrici dei Passaporti 1858-1873”: passport stubs from the year 1858 to 1873.
The time lapse is very limited, only 15 years, but every year contains the traces of approximately 1200-1500 passports! So it’s a big number anyway.
As just seen, the passport was a single big sheet. These sheets were bound in a register which contained 100 passports each.
For each sheet, the stripe that was along the binding of the register was the stub of the correspondent passport, which had to be compiled with the same data.
So, although it is very unlikely to find the real passport, it may be possible to find the stub reporting all the info, including the birth town, which is sometimes a brick wall to tear down.
The oldest registers were organized in a different way: instead of compiling the stub, the Questura Officer was attaching the documents supplied to obtain the passport, hence the Nulla Osta or the reference letter, or even an old passport.
Browsing through this miscellaneous collection always opens up to surprises: if you find the document about your ancestor, you may discover where he was travelling to, when, and for which reason. You may discover other family members he was traveling with, or sometimes info about his military service such as the place where he served the army and which gave the authorization for the passport.
From a researcher’s point of view, it is hard job but very interesting.
So, if finding your ancestor’s passport may be just as probable as being hit by a meteorite while jogging in the park, the chances of stumbling upon a Nulla Osta, a passport stub or another document are much higher.
Here are some amazing examples.
Together with the Nulla Osta, this man had to prove that he had accomplished to this military duties and he provided therefore a certificate stating that he was exempted by his military service for being the only son of a man older that 50: additional info that you would never expect to find in a passport collection!
This is a crop of a nulla osta that I found by chance: he was the ancestor of another customer of mine, not the one who hired me to search for passports. I stumbled upon him and I was very surprised to discover that he was going to Marseille and Calcutta, because we only knew that he was a sea captain going back and forth Italy and South America.
Besides this, a note about distinguishing marks revealed that he was “vajuolato”, hence that he had had smallpox and survived, but his face showed the typical smallpox scars.
I never expected to find such detailed info about an ancestor!
This was the authorization to issue 5 passports to people who were not from the Kingdom of Sardinia: I think that they were in transit, heading to their final destination Alessandria, in Egypt, but eventually they needed to have a passport, and the Questura of Genova issued it.
They were a merchant from Vicenza, an owner from Padova, a student from Rovigo, a trader from Cremona and another merchant from Udine
Here is another case of a multiple request to obtain passports: in this case, they were seamen and they needed the document to be able to sail to Messina, where they were going to reach the vessel they were working on.
This is really a document that tells a story!
A passport that was returned to the Questura after the journey: this document actually traveled around the world in his owner’s pocket.
Its folds, its tears, all the stamps and notes tell the story of an adventure!
After seeing the conditions of these documents, I bet you are all wondering if there is a quick way out: were these documents scanned or indexed?
Last time I went there (March 2024) the staff of the State Archive told me someone is going to scan the documents and put them online. No date knowm, which means that it may take 1 year, 10 years, or perhaps the project will be canceled.
Anyway, a part of these documents (indexed!) is already available online on the following website, even if I am not able to tell which years are included.
I hope you found this article interesting. Leave a comment if you did, and feel free to tell me your experience about old Italian passports.
I am so happy that I had a small role in this documentary about the emigration from the Italian region Valle d’Aosta to South Africa!
I am very grateful to the film maker Joseph Péaquin for involving me in this amazing job!
Here is the trailer of the documentary, whose preview will be in Aosta on March 14th, 2024.
It all started with serendipity: I was doing genealogical research at the Diocese Archive in Aosta last year and I told the archivist that my Customer’s ancestor emigrated from Valle d’Aosta to South Africa.
The archivist told me that a documentary was going to be made about emigration from that region to South Africa, and that the Producer may have been interested in my Customer’s story.
One year later, both my Customer and I appear in the same video!
Despite my shyness and my absolute embarassment and inadequacy in front of a video camera, it was a great experience!
Don’t miss the other documentary about emigration from Valle d’Aosta to the USA, which was made last year.
Premetto che non ho nulla a che fare con il Comune di Chiavari e che – per ora – non ho neppure visitato il loro archivio.
Tuttavia, in vista di una ricerca che dovrò fare, ho richiesto informazioni e soprattutto un INVENTARIO dei fondi custoditi, che sono stati recentemente restaurati dopo essere rimasti abbandonati e inaccessibili per 60 anni!
Ecco l’inventario che mi è stato inviato. Si tratta di 3 documenti in Excel:
Per ulteriori informazioni potete contattare la gentilissima ed efficientissima responsabile:
Dott.ssa Barbara Bernabò
0185 365339
barbara.bernabo@comune.chiavari.ge.it
https://trasparenza.comune.chiavari.ge.it/archivio3_personale_0_54856_68_1.html
Foto in evidenza: http://www.sa-liguria.beniculturali.it/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=266&catid=15&Itemid=167
After writing a post about the most beautiful archive found so far, here is a selection of the WORST ARCHIVES I had the chance to work in.
It is just for a laugh, not to criticize. For this reason, I made the places not recognizable (I hope) with a strong post-processing and effects-addition on the original pictures, so that nobody would feel bad about it.
These three parish archives are in Piedmont.
THE REGISTERS ON THE FLOOR
I swear it was not my idea, it was the parish cooperator who pulled them out of the furniture and laid them on the carpet, because all other surfaces were covered with a variety of different stuff.
So, I mostly worked on my knees on the floor.
I can confirm that the carpet was very soft and the registers did not suffer any mishandling or damage!
THE BEDROOM
When you are in a very small town with a very small parish and a very small priest’s house that hosts a parish archive, where is the archive?
In the kitchen? In the bathroom? Of course, neither of them is suitable.
It’s in the bedroom!
Fancy a nap?
WORKING WITH A VIEW
OK, this was another archive without a table, without a chair, without a bed, without a surface to put the registers on. No carpet this time, and the floor was filthy.
The best solution was to use the windowsill, after having roughly cleaned it from dust, pieces of concrete, spider webs and dead stink bugs (and I was lucky that it had just stopped raining).
I was inspired for this series of posts by the many requests for help that are posted on Facebook groups, where assistance in understanding handwritten records is asked.
Handwriting can be an issue, and not only for foreigners. Sometimes, even Italians struggle with unintelligible words and sentences.
Well, believe it or not, in some cases it is possible to bypass the handwriting problem.
We could call it…
INVESTIGATE INSTEAD OF INVENT
Here is my third post and it is dedicated to FAMILY NAMES
The previous ones were dedicated to PLACE NAMES and FIRST NAMES, here are the links, if you missed them:
for PLACE NAMES: https://egancestryresearch.com/2022/02/15/how-to-understand/
For FIRST NAMES: https://egancestryresearch.com/2022/11/17/how-to-understand-first-names/
I am not going to teach you how to read a particular calligraphy. I am going to give you some hints which may be helpful to interpretate the correct name.
INFO AND SOME TIPS ABOUT FAMILY NAMES
2. If this is not possible, check if the surname is still present in town.
I use the following link, it’s a telephone guide.
https://www.elenchitelefonici.it/elenco-telefonico/ricerca-cognome-nome/
Unlike other online telephone guides, providing results only if you input the correct surname, this one shows you the list of all surnames in town.
This is very useful especially if you did not catch the initial letter of your surname: check all initial letters and you may find the correct surname.
Procedure:
Select the province
Select the town
Select the initial letter
This website is based on search entries, not only on surnames, so you may find entries like “hotel” or “taxi” (besides a lot of annoying ads, I am sorry).
3. If the researched surname is definitely not specific of that town, you may double-check the surnames of the surrounding towns: people were not usually moving to distant towns, so it is possible that the person you are searching for was coming from a nearby one.
To find out the neighboring towns, use the Italian version of Wikipedia: digit the town and you will find them listed on the right margin (Comuni confinanti).
Choose indexes written in a readable way and browse through the surnames.
4. Check if your ancestor signed at the bottom of the record: his handwriting may be clearer than that of the clerk or priest (and you also win a copy of your ancestor’s autograph!)
5. Just like I explained for first names, Italian family names follow the rules of Italian grammar, so some combinations of letters are more likely than others. Here are some basic rules to help with the correct spelling.
The letters C, D, F, G, L, R, S, T, V and Z are not preceded by M, they must be preceded by N.
Examples: Bianchi, Conti, D’Angelo
The letters P and B are not preceded by N, they must be preceded by M Examples: Colombo, Campi.
Surnames usually end with a vowel, like the majority of Italian words.
Only in a few cases they end with a consonant, and this is usually N (especially in Veneto and North-Easter Italy), R, S, T or L.
Surnames ending with other consonants (Kovac, Martinez) hint at a foreign origin.
6. Many Italian surnames derive from patronymics, hence referring to an ancestral patriarch: De Luca, De Angelis, D’Adamo, De Bernardi etc.
If the surname you are struggling to understand starts with De or Di, maybe the following word is a first name (in Italian or perhaps in Latin).
In many cases, the De is omitted, and the surname is resembling more closely a first name: Bernardi, Mauri, Tonietti (from Antonio), Tommasini
7. Surnames deriving from toponyms are also very frequent. They refer to the ancestral place of origin of the family: a nation, a region, a city, a town or even a hamlet of a town.
It’s the case of surnames like Spagnoli, Pugliese, Siciliano, Romano, Milano, Messina, Gissi (my surname and also a town in Abruzzo).
If you have doubts about the correct spelling of your researched surname, you may find inspiration on Google Maps!
Perhaps it originates from the name of a nearby place.
8. If you are struggling to spot your family on registers written in Latin, consider that the family name may have been translated into Latin!
For example, Rossi may have been recorded as Rubeis.
The following image shows the Latin version of the surname Della Casa Grande (meaning: From the Big House, hence the orphanage. It was a typical surname for foundlings)
Della Casa Grande was translated “De Domo Magna“, which has the equivalent meaning in Latin, but it’s not so easy to catch if you don’t know both languages.
(Don’t despair! Even if you do not know the meaning of the researched surname, and you wouldn’t be able to translate it into Latin, I must admit I stumbled upon this circumstance only occasionally).
I hope these few tips were helpful and I wish you good search!
Genealogical research = registers, archives, folders, records, shelves…
Genealogical research in Italy = all the above, in an ancient baroque chapel!!!
This is the brand new Vigevano Diocese Archive, so far the most beautiful I ever visited.
Besides being pleasant for your soul and mood, working in this archive is also perfect in terms of efficiency: parish registers are at hand, there is no limit to the number of books which is possible to collect and – last but not least at all! – the staff is extremely nice and helpful! Thank you to everybody!
I will soon post a selection of the worst archives where I worked, so that you do not start thinking it’s always like this.
E. G. ANCESTRY RESEARCH 
