Identification needs

The itinerary is for you. The passport is for authorities. If you’re on a busy tour I guess keep your passport with you. When I lived there I rarely had a passport with me but sparingly used a passport card or military ID. . I watched a Police sweep in Heidelberg HBF and got a stern lecture from the officer in charge after presenting ID.

If authorities need to know about you…..you and they will find out. Keep an itinerary on your phone, perhaps in the calendar feature.

What’s everyone else have to say??

I have the itinerary on my phone, iPad and one paper copy. I discard parts of the paper copy as the trip continues. In Italy the law requires non-Schengen citizens to carry their passports as ID. If you do not chose to carry your passport I would have a paper copy with me at all times along with a photo of my passport on my phone and iPad, keep another paper copy in my luggage and have a photo uploaded to the "cloud".

Hello bandpeck, and welcome to the forum,

Legally you need to carry ID with you and the only ID that really works for Europe is your Passport since your drivers license or local ID they won't care about. You could make a copy of your passport which might suffice in a pinch or help you if you were to lose your passport. There are long "Do I need to carry my passport?" threads in the forum if you want to search them.

As for tickets, itinerary and copies of important documents I generally print the stuff we might need - train tickets, museum or attraction tickets, hotel addresses and reservation numbers - but generally I have everything in the cloud and in apps as an backup. A photo of your passport stored in the cloud may help you in a pinch and self check in places may want a picture of your passport as part of check in. Apps like the Trenitalia app will store tickets and maybe other apps depending on what you're planning on.

No one cares about your itinerary - aside from immigration entering and exiting Schengen - but you so store it however you are comfortable with. I like the cloud storage because in a pinch - assuming you remember your passwords - you can access it from any place when needed.

Hope that answers your question, have a great trip,
=Tod

Hi, Giangilberto from Milan, Article 6, paragraph 3 of the Consolidated Law on Immigration requires foreign nationals to present their passport or another form of identification upon the request of police officers. This is not merely a tip from a guidebook, it is a legal obligation.
You must carry the original document with you, do not leave it in a safe, as many suggest.
Regarding the practical side of things, here is what I would recommend for two travelers, taking the absolute worst-case scenario into account:
Carry the original document on your person, in an inside pocket or a money belt, rather than in a shoulder bag, which is easily snatched.
Carry a photocopy each, the best approach is for each person to carry a copy of the other’s passport. If one person is robbed, the other still has a copy. Also, keep a digital copy in your email or on a cloud service that can be accessed without your phone, if heaven forbid, your phone is stolen or lost along with your wallet, a file saved only on the phone will be of no use.
For your itinerary, a digital copy and a printed copy are sufficient, in case you need to show proof of accommodation.
In the event of theft or loss, you must file a report with the State Police (Polizia di Stato) or the Carabinieri before visiting your consulate, having a copy of the passport significantly speeds up both processes.

My wife and I each have a small carry-on backpack and a larger checked backpack. And we each have a passport wallet/folder.

In each of the four backpacks, we have an itinerary printout, and a copy of our two passports.

In the passport wallet/folder, we each have an itinerary printout and our actual passports.

I also have an official passport card I bought the last time I renewed my passport. That card goes in my wallet. And we each have our passports stored in our phones in G**gle Wallet, as well as MS-word documents of our itinerary and hotel reservations.

Bags can get lost or stolen, phones can break or get stolen. And paper doesn't need a battery to work.

Carry your passport with you. It's the only accepted piece of ID in a foreign country. Make a photocopy/photo of the main page of the passport for the unlikely time you lose it and your travelling companion should have a copy of it too.

As noted above- you are required by law to have your passport on your person.
We carry in our money belts.
Each of us has photocopies of both passports as well.

Itinerary is up to you- I keep it on my phone and a printed copy in my travel folder. Husband has it in an email- I guess in case one of us gets lost along the way. It is really just a list of which hotels on which nights as we don't travel with a really strict touring itinerary anymore.

I usually also send itinerary to one of my sisters- but have slacked off doing that since all of our elderly parents have passed away, don't feel the need to have a family member know exactly where we are each day (which my sister scolded me for when I didn't send to her last trip lol)

When carrying your passport on your person I’d suggest placing it into a waterproof bag or case of some sort. Many places have high humidity and if you go to a beach you risk it getting wet or damp and the current USA passports with their built in electronics can get damaged and replacing a passport while overseas can be expensive (ask me how I know). I’ve been traveling to Italy for close to 30 years, consecutively, am married to an Italian, have all Italian relatives and in-laws, and ALWAYS carry my passport on my person, except when I lived in Italy, but that’s a story for another time. Just carry it with you. I did it Mexico, Guatemala, Greece (where we currently are) Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, and everywhere else in the world. Why should Italy be different? It’s the law. And yes, I’m a stickler for following the law.

In addition to a copy of your passport, it is also a good idea to copy the passport bar code. While I do not have first hand experience with this, I have heard it helps in case a lost passport needs to be replaced quickly.

Morning All,
Just a bit of first-hand experience to add to the mix: One of our backpacks with passport, was left on a train Paris-Avignon. Luckily, I had copies of each of our passports, so when we got to the Paris embassy for replacement, it only took about an hour.
I'm a paper person. Like the security. Well, we just returned from Milan and our accommodations didn't have a printer, so couldn't print out our boarding pass...no worries we took a photo of it with our phone. Alas, the security scanner couldn't read it. We had to check-in again, at Delta, for a printed boarding pass. The Delta lady told me they don't have printing machines there, so we couldn't print it out ourselves, so we had to wait in line. It added some stress, but all worked out ok.
So, my advice is to carry a paper copies, not only of passports, but reservations, etc.
Enjoy!