customs

When we flew to Venice (with a plane change in Helsinki) we had to go through immigration in Helsinki. When we landed in Venice, we just walked out--nobody looked at anything. Since our Helsinki lay-over was only 45 minutes, I was pretty stressed, but we made it through. Customs is your first stop back in the US.

Final destination and it is a walk through.

Immigration (passport check) is at your first layover if it's a Schengen country and you're connecting to another Schengen country. If the layover is a non-Schengen (like the UK), then immigration is at your final destination. Customs (the stuff you're carrying with you) is at your final destination regardless.

There is customs at your final destination in Europe. But European countries have a "red channel-green channel" system. If you have nothing to , you walk through the green channel, and people doing this are only rarely stopped. This has led to the misperception that customs in Europe doesn't exist; it does, but it's much less obtrusive than in the US. In the US, everyone has to go through the same line; there's no "nothing to " line. So customs is very obvious in the US. As stated above, where you go through passport control ("immigration") varies by route and final destination. If you traveling to Italy via another country in the Schengen Area, such as France or Germany, you will go through passport control there, and your flight into Italy is like a domestic flight (but, as said above, you still go through customs in Italy). If you travel via a non-Schengen country such as Ireland or the UK, or fly nonstop from the US, you will go through passport control in Italy. Note that these things do change. Flying from Ireland to the US, you now go through Irish passport control, US passport control and US customs all in Ireland; your flight arrives in the US as though it were a domestic flight, with no "formalities" at all. This is a recent change, and there are plans to implement US formalities in more foreign airports (New York Times article here).