Italy Project Location Field Guidelines

Profile managers: Chris Ferraiolo [send private message], I. Caruso [send private message], Frank Santoro [send private message], and Italy Project WikiTree [send private message]

Italy Project Location Field Guidelines

Italy as a country has existed since 1861 when the various kingdoms on the Italian peninsula unified under one banner. Before that, the land was known by many different names since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The general WikiTree rule is to use "then and there" in the location fields. This rule should be followed, if the correct "then" location name can be researched easily. The "there" location name in most cases will be in Italian (other cases might be German for the Province of South Tyrol), never English.

For pre-1700 profiles, the general WikiTree rule "there and then" should be followed.

The correct "today" location would be: frazione (optional), municipality, province, region, country. The locations in the drop down menue are most often correct for "today" locations, but are often not correct for historical locations. The drop down list is maintained by FamilySearch, not by WikiTree.

Because Italy has had a long and sometimes turbulent history, the Italy Project has decided that it is perfectly fine to use present day locations ("today and there") for all after-1700 profiles under its jurisdiction. For example, if someone was born in 1848 in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida, the place of birth would be similar to someone who was born in that town after unification. It would show as "San Pietro a Maida, Catanzaro, Calabria, Italia" (Italian) or "San Pietro a Maida, Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy" (English).

This applies to every region, town and city on the Italian penninsula.

Other rules apply to the Italian Location Categories.