Here the right comes neither from family nor from marriage: it comes from time spent living legally in Italy. And the file reflects that — every country you have passed through has to show up on paper. I prepare, apostille and sworn-translate the Brazilian documents this application runs on.
This is the route for someone who has lived in Italy legally for years and has neither an Italian ancestor nor an Italian spouse — or has one, but the shorter route does not apply to the case. Naturalisation by residence recognises a bond built with the country: you lived there, worked, declared income, were on the register.
The minimum period of legal residence varies according to your nationality, your ties to Italy and your registration history — and it is the first point to confirm before spending anything on documents. There are shorter scenarios and longer ones. I do not assess eligibility; I prepare the documentation once your case is settled. If neither this route nor citizenship by descent fits your situation, that is worth clarifying before any document is ordered.
What practically never changes: the count depends on residence that is registered and continuous. Periods when you lived in Italy without being entered in the anagrafe — the municipal population register — normally do not count, however real they were.
If you are starting now, the first step is not a document at all: it is checking that your residence registration is correct and from what date it runs.
The official list is published by the authority that receives the application, and it changes over time. The Brazilian core of it is this:
The most expensive mistake on this route is ordering everything at once, too early. A criminal record certificate has a short validity; whoever requests it at the start of the process requests it again at the end. The right order is: confirm the list, fix whatever is wrong in the document, and only then apostille and translate.
Anyone who arrives in Italy after living in Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom or anywhere else needs a criminal record certificate from each of them. Every country issues it in its own format, in its own language, with its own stamp — and each of those documents will need its own legalisation and its own translation into Italian.
Two things help a great deal: start requesting these documents before the Brazilian ones, because they usually take longer and arrive by post; and send each one to me as soon as it lands, instead of waiting to gather everything. That way I tell you what needs an apostille or another form of legalisation, and you do not discover at the end that one of them is not usable.
First the document reaches its final version at source, with every annotation on it. Then comes the Hague apostille — or, for countries that are not party to the Convention, the equivalent consular legalisation. Only then comes the sworn translation, which translates the document and the legalisation stamp.
Reversing that order is the most common mistake and the most expensive one: a translation made before the apostille does not cover the apostille, and the set comes back.
I am a sworn translator registered with the Tribunale di Roma and with the Italian Chamber of Commerce: the oath is sworn in Italy, in the form the Italian authority expects.
If, alongside citizenship, you have residence, work or study paperwork running in parallel, see also residence, work and study documents — there is usually a document that serves both fronts, and translating once is cheaper than translating twice.
I lived in Italy without being registered. Does that time count? As a rule it does not count towards legal residence. Confirm your situation before assembling the file — it is the point that sends back the most applications.
Can I use the documents I already had translated for my permesso di soggiorno? Sometimes yes, sometimes no: it depends on how recent the certificate is and on what the authority asks for. Send me what you already have before ordering anything again.
What if my birth certificate spells my name differently? It can be sorted out, but before translation, not after. Names that do not match between certificates are the single problem that holds up the most cases.
Do you file the application for me? No. I handle the documentation: checking, apostille and sworn translation. The application itself is filed by you, or by the professional following your case. If you want the order of the whole operation mapped out first, that is what document consulting is for.
These are different procedures with different paperwork. If you are not sure which one applies to you, confirm that before ordering any document — it is the money most often wasted.
Send me on WhatsApp the list of what you have, of everywhere you have lived, and of what the authority asked for. I will tell you what is missing, what needs an apostille, in what order to do it — and what is not worth translating yet.