What the land registry is and how it works: the definitive beginner’s guide

Let us look at the details to better understand the concepts briefly expressed in the definition

A brief history

The land registry is the official, systematic list of all the real estate in Italy. It is a public inventory open to citizens, professionals and the public administration, useful for ensuring transparency and knowledge of the property stock. The idea of a modern land registry in Italy developed between the 18th and 19th centuries, influenced by European models such as the Austrian land registry and the territorial reforms in Tuscany and the Papal States, up to unification and the adoption of the Italian land registry on a national basis.

The new urban land registry (NCEU) was established by Royal Decree Law no. 652 of 13 April 1939,

Coming to the present day, before 2012 the land registry was managed by an autonomous body called the Agenzia del Territorio, which dealt exclusively with the land registry, cartography and property registration. After 2012, this agency was absorbed into the Agenzia delle Entrate, which unified the fiscal and cadastral functions. Today management is entrusted to the Direzione Centrale Catasto, Cartografia e Pubblicità Immobiliare (Central Directorate for Land Registry, Cartography and Property Registration), an internal structure of the Agenzia delle Entrate that reports to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. It ensures continuous updating of the data, their digitisation and online access. This change has made the system more efficient and uniform across the whole country.

Deeds, registers and maps: how a historic structure became modern

Over time, a documentary structure developed, made up of:

• Deeds: administrative documents including declarations of new construction or change (DOCFA), geometric update deeds (PREGEO), cadastral transfers (volture), and other applications that change cadastral data.
• Registers: systematic collections of the holders’ entries and cadastral accounts, that is, the documents listing the holders of properties and the related property units. The registers include the ‘accounts’ (partite) identifying the properties of a holder, the transfers that record changes of ownership, and the cadastral changes made over time. Originally compiled on paper, these registers are now computerised and can be consulted through the digital land registry system of the Agenzia delle Entrate.
• Maps: graphic representations of land and buildings, originally on paper, now digitised and accessible online through the information system of the Agenzia delle Entrate. The first maps to be drawn covered the whole national territory, divided into sheets and parcels. They were originally printed on large paper sheets, generally 70 x 100 cm, and produced with topographic survey techniques. The maps contained planimetric information such as boundaries, watercourses, roads, contour lines and parcel numbering. This structure has been further standardised and modernised with the introduction of digital tools and advanced technologies such as GIS (Geographic Information System), which allows integrated management of territorial data, improving accuracy, updatability and interoperability with other information systems.
• The maps of the Buildings Registry, which are more recent, focus instead on individual urban property units, with details of the outline, position, access points and boundaries of buildings. With digitisation, all these maps are now managed in vector or raster format using professional software and applications developed in-house by the Agenzia delle Entrate. To access them, citizens can use the free ‘Cartographic consultation’ service available on the Agenzia delle Entrate website, through the reserved area with SPID or enabled credentials. Professionals (surveyors, notaries, bodies) can instead use the SISTER portal, which gives full access to cadastral maps, extracts, floor plans and other services. Both tools allow georeferenced consultation, printing and extraction of graphic data quickly and accurately.

Fiscal, civil and technical purposes

• Fiscal: the land registry provides the tax base for calculating several taxes linked to owning or transferring property, such as IMU (the municipal property tax), TARI (the waste tax), registration tax, mortgage and cadastral taxes, and inheritance and gift taxes. The cadastral income assigned to each property is essential for determining the amount of tax due, according to the fiscal parameters set by current legislation.
• Civil: it supports notarial deeds, successions, divisions of inheritances and civil lawsuits.
• Technical: the land registry performs an important technical function, since it provides a structured, official set of territorial data that is essential for activities such as topographic surveys, building design, cartographic updates and infrastructure management. Thanks to its graphic component (cadastral maps) and constant updating of information, the land registry enables technicians, surveyors, engineers and architects to work with reliable data on the boundaries, areas, outlines and positions of properties.

Cadastral identification: how land and buildings are identified

Each property is identified by means of four elements:

• Municipality: the administrative territory it belongs to.
• Sheet: a portion of the cadastral map representing part of a municipality’s territory. Each municipality is divided into several numbered sheets, each showing a specific area with parcel boundaries and other useful features such as roads, rivers or buildings. Sheets help keep information on properties in order and make it easy to find each individual property, whether it is a plot of land or a building.
• Parcel (or map number): a continuous portion of land within a cadastral sheet, located in the same municipality. It is marked by a specific number on the map and is used to identify precisely each portion of property, such as a field, a building plot or an area occupied by a building.
  A sheet may contain many parcels. In the Land Registry the parcel is the smallest unit. This means that we will never find a plot of land with a sub-unit. Example: Municipality of Siena, Sheet 12, Parcel 75 (agricultural land).
• Sub-unit: a number representing a building unit, used to distinguish the individual units within the same parcel. For example, if a block of flats (that is, a parcel) contains several apartments or shops, each of them has its own sub-unit. The sub-unit is therefore linked to the parcel and the sheet to identify exactly each individual property unit. The sub-unit is considered the smallest unit in the Buildings Registry. Example: Municipality of Rome, Sheet 150, Parcel 320, Sub-unit 5 (apartment).

Description of properties: the recorded characteristics

In addition to the identifier, the land registry records:

• Location: address or geographical location.
• Area: in the Buildings Registry it is measured in square metres, while the Land Registry uses the hectare (or its submultiples) as the unit of measurement, which is better suited to large agricultural or rural areas.
• Cadastral category: indicates the intended use of the property (dwelling, office, shop, etc.) and is assigned by the Agenzia delle Entrate according to the characteristics of the property unit and its function. The categories are organised into groups (A, B, C, D, E) and are assigned according to technical and functional criteria, often following declarations and documentation submitted by qualified professionals (e.g. through the DOCFA procedure). For example, category A/2 refers to middle-range residential dwellings (average standard), while category A/3 is used for economy-type dwellings, with simpler finishes and fittings.
• Class: represents the quality and level of the property’s fittings. In the Buildings Registry, it indicates the degree of finish, comfort and position of the unit (for example, an apartment with good finishes will have a higher class). In the Land Registry, the class measures the agricultural productivity of a plot, on a scale rising from 1 (the best) to higher values for less fertile land.
• Cadastral income: a fiscal value assigned to each property unit, which serves as the basis for calculating taxes and duties (such as IMU or registration tax). The income is calculated by the Agenzia delle Entrate on the basis of several factors: the category and class of the property, the area where it is located, its surface and its intended use.
• The category indicates the type of property (e.g. dwelling, shop), while the class represents the level of quality or productivity.
• For buildings, the income is based on rates set for each category and class, published in official tables that anyone can consult.
• For land, by contrast, two values are calculated: the landowner’s income (reddito dominicale), attributed to the owner, and the agricultural income (reddito agrario), attributed to the farmer, based on the quality, use and class of the soil. Here too, the rates are determined and made public through national tables, which make the calculation criteria applied transparent. In theory, the valuations should be updated every five years.
• Holder: the name of the person (natural or legal) in whose name the property is registered in the land registry. It does not necessarily indicate the true owner, but whoever has declared possession or a right in rem (such as usufruct or use) over the property. It serves to link a property to a person, but has no legal value as proof of ownership, which is instead determined by the property registers.
• Annotations: additional information written on the cadastral record. In the Land Registry they may indicate, for example, the presence of easements, restrictions or changes of crop. In the Buildings Registry they may concern structural modifications, updates not yet recorded, planning restrictions or rights over common areas. They serve to supplement the main data with details useful for a full understanding of the property.

Land Registry and Buildings Registry

The division arose for operational and historical reasons. Today they are still two separate registers.

The Land Registry (Catasto Terreni) originates in Law no. 3682 of 1 March 1886, known as the ‘Messedaglia Law’, which introduced a cartographic system for recording land for tax purposes. The areas shown in the cadastre are considered ‘conventional’, that is, based on old surveys and on a stable representation of the territory. For this reason, even if a modern technical survey shows a different area, the recorded figure cannot be updated automatically.

To officially change the cadastral area, a technical document called a ‘tipo particellare’ (parcel plan) must be prepared, which allows the recorded boundaries and measurements to be corrected. Alternatively, the discrepancy can simply be flagged by means of an annotation, but without any change to the official data.

The Buildings Registry (Catasto Fabbricati) was established by Royal Decree no. 652 of 13 April 1939, later converted into Law no. 1249 of 11 August 1939. These rules introduced the New Urban Building Registry (NCEU), that is, a system for recording and classifying in an orderly way all the buildings in cities and built-up areas. The aim was to create a single, precise tool for estimating the income of properties, on which taxes are calculated, in a uniform way across the whole country.

The distinction between the two systems became necessary in order to manage separately assets of different nature and use, and it is still maintained today for organisational, fiscal and technical reasons.

Links between the Land Registry and the Buildings Registry

When a building is constructed on a building plot (recorded in the Land Registry), a direct link between the two registries is triggered. In this case, the appointed professional (surveyor, architect, engineer) submits a DOCFA filing to register the building in the Buildings Registry, with a description of the individual property units (subalterns). At the same time, the original land parcel is deleted from the Land Registry (with the reason ‘transfer to the Buildings Registry’) and activated in the Buildings Registry with the same parcel number.
For example, a building plot recorded as Sheet 17, Parcel 200 in the Land Registry will, after the construction of an apartment block, become Sheet 17, Parcel 200 in the Buildings Registry, with distinct subalterns:

All these steps are documented and visible in the historical cadastral search, where you can check the deletion from the Land Registry and the activation in the Buildings Registry, with continuity of identifier and traceability of changes.

The cadastre has no evidentiary value

The cadastre has only informational and declarative value: it records the data that are declared, but it does not legally prove who owns a property or exactly what its characteristics are. To find out who the true owner is, you must consult the property registers. Other data, such as the area or the cadastral income, may also be inaccurate or out of date. However, thanks to new technologies and digitalisation, cadastral data are now increasingly aligned with those of the property registers, which remain in any case the official legal source for establishing ownership.