Living In Italy

What's the citizenship on your passport? Do you expect to work or study in Italy or are you retired? Without those two questions answered any attempt to help you is a shot in the dark.

Mike, There are a few here in the HelpLine that have done that, so they'd be the best ones to answer that question. You might want to have a look at the website * www.expatsinitaly.com * for information on what's required (cut & paste the link inside the asterisks). I spoke with a couple from the U.S. when I was in Rome a few months ago, and they had been living in Italy for about six months. They described the process and as with much in Italy, it's COMPLICATED by the bureaucracy! They spent many months working on the paperwork, which included meetings at the closest Italian Consulate, full financial records and disclosure to guarantee that they'd be able to support themselves without working, they had to present their marriage certificate and a bunch of other documentation. It apparently wasn't an easy process. Living in Italy may turn out to be different than first thought. As you can stay for 90-days on a tourist Visa, you might consider renting an apartment for 3-months in a whichever town you choose, and do a "test run" to begin with to see whether you like it. You might contact the Italian Consulate (I believe they have an office in L.A.) as they'd be the best ones to provide accurate information on the residency requirements. Good luck!

check out Eurobimbo's Journey to Enlightenment website. Tania and Keith lived in California and in 2005, moved to Tuscany. Her older posts describe the process they went through. I think she also has some links to information on moving to Italy.

Living in Italy is wonderful. The paperwork process to live there (legally) is frustraing, exhausting, and can be expensive. We were fortunate (so we thought) that my wife's employer would "sponsor us" through the paperwork process. Three years later - yep, three years - we finally got ALL of our paperwork. There are many visa options. We tried multiple options, worked with local lawyers, and utilized the resources of the school. Certainly that helped us, but my wife's paperwork took 13 months (and she was working there for 11 of those months!). First she got her work visa (good for one year) and then her permesso - which took 6 more months.... so about 17 months after she arrived, she finally had "permission to stay!" Through the process we had to get copies of our marriage license and my wife's diplomas translated to Italian... we had to go to the Questura (police station) about eight times (often with school's lawyers), and the immigration office four times. Conversely, the process in Denmark 3 weeks ago took four weeks by mail and three hours upon arrival. After three hours we had MORE "papers" than we did in three years of Italy - The funny thing was once we got our final paperwork in Italy, it expired in less than five months. The Italian clerk told me I better start working on my renewals now! So - Be patient, don't take no for an answer, and ALWAYS take multiple copies of EVERYTHING you can think of when you head to a consulate, police station, or immigration office. NEVER give up your originals! These are all lessons we learned - Sorry this is such a long, single paragraph. Someday I'll write a blog post about our paperwork challenges in Italy... I'll need a few glasses of wine first!!!!

Thanks for the swift and helpful responses. To answer Beatrix questions, we are American citizens and we are in the official range for retirement. However, I am a writer and will likely continue. Any info about buying a place in Italy? Any suggestions on where to do that? Tuscany, Umbria, and the other "hot spots" look like they'd be too expensive for us. Ideally, we'd like to be away from the large cities, but close enough [INVALID] say an hour or less by train [INVALID] to them. Thanks for the website tips. They look good.

You might want to check out the expatsinitaly.com site too for good info.

Buying a Home in Italy by David Hampshire gives a fairly good overview of the home buying process. It's written from a UK viewpoint, but is helpful in understanding the process. Survival Books (the publisher) has another book called Living and Working in Italy, although I've not actually read that one. Both are available from Amazon.

Mike, if you don't seek employment going with a 6 month tourist visa is usually the easiest version of trying out life abroad. Any of the expat sites mentioned above will probably give your more additional info than a tourist website such as this.

We've been following your various bits of advice and have found them to be very helpful. I have a close friend who has many relatives all over Italy (they include attorneys, real estate people, professors, etc.) and he's referred us to them, which is a great help. At the moment we're paying attention to Le Marche, where I can cross the Rubicon as many times as I feel like it. BTW, it looks like two can live a frugal life there with about 25,000 a year, and live quite comfortably with 40,000. Tuscany and even Umbria would be a whole lot more it seems.